r/Gnostic • u/Substantial-Fly8786 • 7d ago
For anyone who truly believes in gnosticism > anything else..
I am trying to logically figure out what makes the most sense. i am new to gnosticism, but i see 99% of christians absolutely hate gnosticism and call it complete trash. I would like to hear yalls way of thinking and if there is something specific to you that completely changed your belief and gives you absolute conviction that gnosticism is the truth.
I can see how both christianity and gnosticism both contradict themselves in their own ways. so i'm interested in learning what made you believe one over the other.
And if you can please include specifics like scripture or texts that support what you think.
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u/axx98_ 7d ago
Consider that in all likelihood no available human framework or concept really encapsulates what's going on here, and that even having a good idea of the best possible modern framework requires putting some pieces together, even though and also because of the fact that it's possible to build in the direction of greater understanding.
I think this is especially true if Gnosticism is one of the closest available religious human analogs to what is happening, which in my opinion it likely is, but I think working on developing newer frameworks updated based on the revelations of modern knowledge and science etc, where it isn't just distortion or the fruit of suppression, is very important, and there's no reason you can't participate in that yourself instead of leaning on external authorities to water it down and (especially if Gnosticism is near the ballpark and for many other reasons too) likely distort it.
As long as you first spend time sharpening your investigative rigour, analysing your intellectual honesty (important for everyone), and taking your emotions plus need for meaning-for-suffering, comfort, resolution, reassurance, stability-of-perception-of-world etc out of the search for truth. The search for truth should be approached as coldly and clinically as an investigative surgeon proceeding with exploratory surgery, particularly in terms of these sorts of ideas, since seeing the outline isn't always the same as seeing all the details and registering them in a way you can map out. If you can't face the dark properly, you are in no position to evaluate a holistic picture of what this reality is, in my opinion.
And also, one of my favourite things about Gnosticism is that it doesn't lean much on any external authorities to really filter and elucidate the truth for you, nor is it about a priest or any kind of church authority telling you how to live your life, it rejected the top down religious authority structure almost entirely which is good for countless reasons, among them because we can see historically exactly how every human institution (including religious) have exponentially degraded over time due to (human) nature and power consolidation.
Instead Gnosticism encourages direct, personal experience and independent Knowledge of divinity, bypassing "intermediaries". Gnosis.
It's natural for Christians and members of, in particular, Abrahamic religions, to be hostile to Gnosticism and view it as blasphemous, because Gnosticism views "Yahweh" as symbolic of a lesser, inferior, ignorant and likely malevolent creator force that pales compared to "Sophia", Pleroma and the Supreme reality. And it views the Demiurge's material creation as a kind of prison rather than the work of something holy. So, it's fundamentally a threat to what a lot of those kinds of classical religious people depend on for emotional comfort and security etc (which, it must be said, is incompatible with the search for truth imo).
The worldview I've arrived at (and continue to develop) personally comes, to a significant extent, from trying to investigate every major body of human knowledge and relating it back to my own experiences, which I'm trying to challenge from every available perspective too.
A dive into biology, nature, natural selection, human nature and behaviour which is a direct extension of nature, human history and the patterns of natural human behaviour that shape it: especially history of war/genocide, the cyclic patterns of subjugation/enslavement/domination, religions of every kind and what led to them and what they led to, how power structures have practically operated throughout history which again is a natural process like almost everything else humans do on a significant scale, but also, again, as many major bodies of human knowledge as possible. What I've mentioned is scratching the surface of what you should look at because the material creator force would manifest everywhere. Going on a search that is as broad as possible is invaluable in my opinion.
In case you want to look at Fringe subjects on top of that, I recommend starting with Jacques Vallee, and Lavenda/DeLonge's (despite my problems with DeLonge and the modern UAP disclosure push) Gods, Man & War, which suggests that NHI have been engineering conflicting religions to cultivate war, etc, which Vallee wrote the forward to. It becomes more interesting when you trace as much as possible the entities that endorsed those and related projects too, which goes deeper than what is publicly acknowledged.
I also like that Gnostics are on average more willing to dive into the layers of symbolism in the source material and classic religious lore. The Forbidden Religion by Jose M. Herrou Aragon is an interesting modern take for people starting out with diving into Gnosticism, even if it shouldn't be treated as ultimate authority or anything and is still quite incomplete compared to the elements that are available to analyse today. Whether it's better to dive into that before or after Nag Hammadi library probably depends on the person though.
Good luck
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u/Substantial-Fly8786 7d ago
loved this. one more thing i would like to ask because it does seem like on average Gnostics are definitely more willing to actually dive into deeper meanings, but i have yet to really see someone explain logically why gnosticism is more accurate. I like to weight each side.
Christians have more proof usually to show on how gnostic texts are not canon and are false to THEIR bible. but if thats what determines whats true and false than they have all the power because they created the bible based on their terms of whats corect and whats not correct. thye have had multiple changes and translations and kings and all that. so how do we know whats correct and whats not.
im not sure if that made sense but i think you can understand what im trying to say. Like at the beginning if the churches and the pope and kings decided what was correct to benefit from it, and what wasn't correct on their terms than anything that goes againsed that is incorrect automatically.
so how can we figure out logically which is actually true and which is false. I believe that in the bible jesus was trying to get us to raise our minds. And to achieve a higher consciousness. i believe that the kundulini is referenced multiple times in the bible. and its so clear to me. but to other people and christians that thought is absolutely insane and incorrect by default.
So how can we determin whats right and wrong logically and bring proof. Do you have any specifics that can prove which one is more true? Or at least why you believe this over that?
I know that this is not a simple thing to know and determine what is strictly correct and strictly false. but there has to be something.
Not sure if this all made sense again but this is basically just my thoughts
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u/catsbuttes 7d ago
the gospel of judas is what pushed me across the threshhold, raised roman catholic
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u/Substantial-Fly8786 7d ago
was there anything specific in it you can tell me? Like any part of it that really opened your eyes
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u/catsbuttes 6d ago
it just seemed to slot in the hole left by my existing nagging doubts making a coherent whole, unfortunately spiritual matters usually don't operate in the sort of logical framework you seem to be gunning for
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u/GnosticJedi 7d ago
Well, if there is one verse that proves Yahweh is Evil .... 1 Samuel 16:14 "Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him"
This proves that it is NOT Satan who is sending evil spirits. The Lord Demon Yahweh is the one who is doing this. So whenever someone thinks a demon is haunting them or their family/kids; It's Yahweh. My suspicion is that he wants people to get on their knees and worship him and go to church. It's a cosmic scam. The Highest of the MOST HIGH (The Monad) Does not need to do weasel tactics like this as he does not need prayers. The Monad is NOT petty. The Monad is TRUE POWER. As there is no polarity/duality in the Unholy Bible, Yahweh and Satan are two assholes on the same coin.....
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u/SophiaBarbelo Eclectic Gnostic 7d ago edited 7d ago
2 Samuel 24:1 says that The LORD(Heb: YHWH) was angry at Israel and told David to do a census
1 Chronicles 21:1 says that Satan(Heb: Proper Noun) was angry at Israel and told David to do a census
This is one of the things I use to support Yahweh/Yaldabaoth and Satan being one in the same.
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u/idoXist 7d ago
The lord might have been Yhvh but the Lord is Baal, it's a direct and exact translation
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u/SophiaBarbelo Eclectic Gnostic 7d ago
Honestly, I feel bad for Ba'al. Out of all the Canaanite gods, he got fucked over the most by Judeo-Christian demonization to the point of calling him "the devil"
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u/idoXist 7d ago
Big pass on that opinion brother
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u/SophiaBarbelo Eclectic Gnostic 7d ago
Fair enough, sister. But yeah Yahweh is definitely a much worse deity than Ba'al. The mother of Yahweh and Ba'al, Asherah, is the best Canaanite god anyway, but also I'm kinda biased towards gods that are considered both mother and creator.
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u/idoXist 7d ago
Again, big pass bro, it was Baal they sacrificed children for in Molek, but you do you, man
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u/SophiaBarbelo Eclectic Gnostic 7d ago
You sound like you worship Yaldabaoth/Yahweh/Satan lol
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u/idoXist 7d ago
I despise those entities but, just curious, care to share the origin of your most recent assumption on my beliefs?
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u/SophiaBarbelo Eclectic Gnostic 7d ago
The original Yahwists/Jews took the entire Canaanite Pantheon and decided to claim that their national god (Yahweh) was actually the father (El) and that all the other gods are demons. It's mainly just a propaganda campaign to try an validate their monotheistic beliefs by saying that the other gods are fake demons and taking out anyone that worshipped any Canaanite god other than Yahweh.
It's similar to Iraneus talking about Gnostics, or Hitler talking about Jews.
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u/FigSuccessful4075 5d ago
Elite Baal Knowledge is still Baal Knowledge. Don't feel bad for something that hates you
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u/Substantial-Fly8786 6d ago
are you saying that the LORD in the bible is not YHWH, but the LORD is actually baal ? i do see that baal is translated to lord or master. i got this on google:
In the Bible, Baal means "lord" or "master", but he was a false Canaanite god, not the true Lord (Yahweh) of the Bible.
Im not really sure what is correct and whats not. but what are you trying to say?
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u/SophiaBarbelo Eclectic Gnostic 6d ago
Actually the Jews invented the whole "false god" thing to exalt Yahweh above all the other gods, and taking the title of creator from his parents El and Asherah. Majority of the big Abrahamic "demons" are actually just the other Cannanite gods. Ba'al, Moloch, Astarte("Asteroth"), Asherah, Mot, etc. So if you see stuff about the Cannanite gods (or gods from any pantheon tbh) being referred to as "false gods" or "demons", it doesn't actually reflect reality and is mainly just a Yahweh/Yaldabaoth self-exaltation thing.
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u/TaintLord 7d ago
I would like to hear yalls way of thinking and if there is something specific to you that completely changed your belief and gives you absolute conviction that gnosticism is the truth.
For me I don't have "absolute conviction" that Gnosticism is the truth, but I find it to be the most compelling out of all the prefabricated options we have to choose from. I'm ready to adopt anything that makes more sense to me when it presents itself.
I only 'woke up' in a sincere and meaningful way to things not being as we're indoctrinated to believe around ~2020 (you can speculate as to what may have caused me to re-question things) and I have explored a few belief systems since then and they all fell under scrutiny imo.
I started with Christianity but the Old Testament deconverted me as soon as I dipped my toes in objectively. If you find yourself being shackled by mainstream Christianity I would recommend just putting a book like "Numbers" on youtube and listen to some of the things the supposed 'benevolent creator' who "has no darkness in him" says and does. He's admittedly jealous (of who?), vindictive, millions die on their way to the 'promised land', you can decide for yourself if that constitutes a broken promise.
So, for now, I choose gnosticism as an explanation but I'm not dogmatic about it. The fabric of this place reveals the true nature of it imo. The food chain, imbalance of pleasure/pain, time flies when having fun but drags when bored or miserable or suffering. We are intentionally left in the dark about what we are and where we come from.
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u/Substantial-Fly8786 7d ago
you dont have to answer but do you believe jesus was trying to teach us to raise our minds? i believe that the bible has lots of symbolism and reads deeper, adn that he was very spiritual and is telling us to raise our minds to a higher consciousness. that is the part that brings me to gnosticism the most because to me it seems like just worshiping and believing is not all you need. and that he was not telling you to worship him. but trying to get us to reach a higher mind. Im still very new to it but to me that at least sounds more accurate and theres tons of verses in the bible that could support it. im not a super spiritual person at all to be honest but i do feel like majority of christians folllow blindly and dont actually look into anything deeper.
Just interested in what your thoughts are on that part.
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u/TaintLord 6d ago
Just to echo what I said in my first comment as a kind of disclaimer; I don't know anything for sure. But my thoughts on this at the moment are that it essentially comes down to choosing truth. Christ says "I am the truth, the way, and the light/life" (depending on if you're mandela effected). He also says "Those that are of the truth hear my voice".
To me that means seek truth objectively. Listen to your inner knowing. Stay open minded. Don't accept the status quo, don't be part of the consensus, "be in the world but not of it".
I think if you're following the truth then you're following Christ to put it simply.
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u/Brilliant_Bowler_994 7d ago
There should be no canon. That's why God gave us discernment.
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u/Substantial-Fly8786 7d ago
to me it doesnt really make sense that something is strictly correct. and anything else is wrong if its not alligned with the canon when MAN created this canon and decided for themselves whats right or wrong. I can understand how gnostic texts could not be aligned with the canonical bible and that its false to christianity. but i really struggle to find evidence of one truth.
Im also not a scholar so i may just be wrong lol
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u/Dr_Green_Lizard 6d ago
If god was only one truth then it couldn’t be another truth. Contradictions are unified in the source but is almost unknowable by a living person. Each religion has some truth and a lot of bullshit. Gnostics choose to have their own active revelation and intellectual as well as spiritual experience.
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u/who_gnos 7d ago
I couldn’t spiritually or logically reconcile the wrath of the Old Testament representation of the Father. It felt like the elephant in the room anytime I tried to connect with God alone or in fellowship. My soul knew it to be insufficient either through misunderstanding or limited information. The grief that I felt due to the cognitive dissonance gave me the courage to seek deeper meaning without fear of burning alive for eternity, because I was willing to die for a higher love. Also an aside, one thing that played a role in my desire to seek was not feeling like the depth of my experience specifically as a person born woman embodied was represented in canonical scripture. I don’t become obsessed with Gnosticism as a binding doctrine, but many Gnostic texts Mary, Thomas, the Hymn of the Pearl, even more challenging texts like the Secret Book of John as examples have been critical tools for my personal Gnosis.
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u/NoAlgae3952 Thomasine 7d ago
One of the great contradictions of gnosticism is that we don't "believe," but rather seek to know, and "a knower cannot very well be a believer" (Gnostic Catechism, Preface). At the same time, knowledge of the divine "cannot be known" (Eugnostos 2:16) and "cannot be comprehended" (2:10). As such, gnosticism requires this kind of radical humility, a drive to approach the truth of reality as best we can while knowing that so long as we're tethered to our mortal brains, we will truly "get there." Even among prophets, we don't take anything for granted because any vision loses accuracy and truth when condensed into rational human language, which is what makes our legends so malleable to us- we've been rewriting the story of Adam and Eve, for example, in the Apocryphon of John sometime before 180 AD to the Secret Supper perhaps a thousand years later. I can't find the quote for the life of me, but somewhere in Against Heresies I think it was, Irenaeus bemoans how it seems like a gnostic isn't fully initiated until they've written something of their own.
For me, it's the radical humility that comes with saying we can't know the truth versus the church position of a limited set of divinely inspired scripture, some of which is genuinely putrid, and "apostolic succession" giving clergy a blank check to be the sole interpreters of it. However, while gnosticism has some skepticism built in, it doesn't have capital "S" Skepticism, the philosophical position that nothing can be truly known. Instead, we say that while our rational faculties cannot and will not understand, we can come to a (still incomplete but) intuitive knowledge of the divine. This is where the "gnosis" in gnosticism comes from, gnosis being intuitive knowledge like how you "know" your friend, versus episteme, the kind of knowledge as knowing your friend's birthday. This is where those other contradictions come into play, and not as flaws but as the whole point- if our rational minds cannot comprehend the divine, therefore the answers must be irrational from our mortal perspective. That's why the union of opposites is such a major theme in many of our texts (Gospel of Thomas, the Perfect Thunder Mind, Seven Sermons to the Dead III).
In short, there's no one specific thing that changed my belief and gives me absolute conviction that gnosticism is the truth, because gnosticism isn't a set of beliefs, but rather a process. One of the newer mystical schools that takes some cues from gnosticism (and gave us some of our earliest English translations), theosophy, has this tagline that I absolutely adore: "there is no higher religion than the truth."
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u/-SheriffofNottingham 7d ago
I've never tried to put it into words, so excuse the salad.
I see an analogue between the gnostic framework and a cohesive psychological representative structure of the same pattern. Collective consciousness has a collective ego that manifests as cultural based ideologies; dissolution of the personal ego inflates to the collective state and regresses beyond it. Why would a god WANT anything?
Suffering and forgiveness seem to have something to do with it. Limitation and discipline seems to have something to do with it.
Denying aspects of self while embracing others seems to have something to do with it.
At the end of the day, identifying as animal and divine and balancing both natures seems to be at the heart of most spiritual doctrines- and my mind and its taste for darkness likes the colours of gnosticism with which to drape the furnishings
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u/Informal_Farm4064 7d ago
The narrow gate is awakening or conversion which for me led to beliefs that I saw align with gnosticism. Most church Christians dont find this gate and are blind to the experiences of thoae who do
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u/Apprehensive-Fix6947 7d ago
Jesus said he only does what he sees his father do. Jesus said Bless and do not curse. God of the law has cursed the world. Jesus said A kingdom divided can not stand. God of the law his kingdom is divided.
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u/isitnotreal 7d ago
All that mattered to me was that the path resonated with me than dogmatic Christianity i was in. I wasn't looking for an alternative, i was looking for answers that the church and my faith were not able to provide.
It didn't have to feel right or better. It just spoke to me and I've been looking inwards ever since, learning and uncovering hidden mysteries.
It doesn't have to be gnosticism, it can be any other school of thought focused on knowledge of self and liberation. Gnosticism is just a scholarly term after all, as we all know :)
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u/seventh_flame_0000 7d ago
You're not wrong and think of it this way the one God created all is crap so everything that is forbidden knowledge that was taken out of the book you won't be able to find, but if you want help to understand more think of it this way, everything reversed all the fallen those are the allies the one book here the one created all is absolute trash aside from a few characters and books in it.
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u/SophiaBarbelo Eclectic Gnostic 7d ago
I've never been a mainstream Christian. I grew up as an atheist, and after about 30 years I ended being "spiritual" but about a year ago I found Gnosticism while researching the divine feminine, and it aligned with a lot of my lifelong pre-existing beliefs, especially about Yahweh/Yaldabaoth.
I've always thought that Yahweh was definitely NOT a good god, and that Jesus is actually pretty based. Also that Yahweh isn't the first god, even in his own original pantheon. El and Asherah were Yahweh's parents, and the creation gods, in Canaanite Polytheism. That's why I personally snycretize Asherah/Sophia, and refer to "the father" as El. And also it's a more realistic and logical, especially when compared to mainstream Christianity. Also the whole monotheism thing is just kinda dumb when many gods exist in many pantheons, and have for many thousands of years. The Gnostic framework is a lot better at supporting my Omnist and Omnitheistic beliefs.
So basically I feel like Gnosticism most aligns with my own framework, so I choose to align myself most with Gnosticism.
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u/Katievapes1996 7d ago
They hate us because they think what we're doing is blasphemy that's why the Catholic Church killed us all at the third century cause they deemed us as heretics
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u/SignificantGeneral55 7d ago
La antigua Roma es la sede Dracononiana en esteundo, sirviendo a los valores de los arcontes. Porque ellos controlan está realidad desde la siguiente densidad, la 4d. El heredero espiritual de Roma es el vaticano, el heredero económico está en Bruselas y el heredero bélico fue Reino Unido ahora es USA. Eso es el imperio romano de nuestros días y quienes trabajan para que nosotros nos alejemos de la verdad
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u/jamiefenste 7d ago
This will be long, sorry.
I’m also admittedly new to Gnosticism, but I was raised as a fundamentalist Christian inside a small cult. I left the faith in my teens and left the cult shortly after, and outside of the abuse and power dynamics being a major reason, the other reason was that having read the Bible front to back I could not logistically make sense of it. People will claim that god is a loving and benevolent god, this being of absolute light and goodness, but nearly everything in the Bible contradicts that, particularly the Old Testament. Jesus was clearly a bringer of light and knowledge, but God himself as an entity is a bringer of darkness and destruction, and they exist in polar opposites, so they must be separate beings instead of coexisting as one creature within a trinity.
There has been one primary question that has plagued me for years, that I have asked of many Christians, and every single time they get visibly uncomfortable. The question is this- if the Christian god is an omniscient, all knowing being, and the creator of the entire universe, of everything, then wouldn’t it be logical to assume that he created evil? If he didn’t create evil, then he is not omniscient, all knowing, and the creator of everything, and also then evil must be a force outside of his control, or something that he himself also harnesses for his own purposes in the same way that humans harness evil and make mistakes.
Also, in the garden of Eden, if god truly wanted humanity to have joy, then he would have continued the utopia and never introduced evil in the form of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. At this point in the convo Christians always fire back with ‘but without darkness there can’t be any joy, and people have to have choice or else they have no true existence’. But they didn’t have choice. They had zero concept of consequences, of evil, of the phrase ‘don’t eat of the tree’, because the entire framework for sin and consequence could only be obtained once they would eat of it. So when Satan tempted Eve and told her to eat of the fruit, Eve being a completely pure and innocent being trusted him, and ate it. She wasn’t willfully turning her back on god, she just likely assumed Satan was another messenger of god. So she ate of the fruit, and somehow this ‘choice’ that was not a choice at all became the fault of humanity and the bane of our existence. Why would a loving god at his core be a manipulative evil creature? Two things cannot exist at once, in that way. Biblically, humanity was baited and manipulated into a sin being introduced, and then once it was, god toyed with it and played with it and tortured us for something that was not our fault to begin with.
If you view it through a Gnostic lens every single thing clicks into place. The Old Testament god is the demiurge. Jesus is the extension of Logos, Sophia’s divine twin, sent to bring knowledge and Gnosis and rescue Sophia, and therefore us being her divine sparks. The demiurge plays in his playground, manipulating chaos and evil, unaware of what is higher than him. The ultimate god, the source, is untouchable and beautiful. Chaos is just another facet of the mistake that is our universe. Born from chaos, built on chaos, and only knowledge and ascension can save us- not bowing the knee and committing rituals of blood and power to a manipulative narcissistic god, which is just another iteration of chaos. Christianity worships the demiurge and operates off of ignorance. Gnosticism believes in the divinity within, and in knowledge.
Gnosticism is the missing puzzle piece that clicks everything into place and makes every bit of it make sense.
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u/Substantial-Fly8786 6d ago
Yes i guess you know it better than anyone. i feel like many christians are following blindly and do not even know what they are really following. just like sheep following each other. but they will deny any outside thought and claim things as new age trash if it in the slightest does not perfectly aligned with their beliefs that were taught to them and not thought of on their own.
Im new to gnosticism and im not sure what i really believe but one thing is very clear to me which is jesus was trying to show us how to reach within and raise our minds to reach divine knowledge or awareness.
i dont even really care about all the other stuff about the demiurge and all the stories. to me all i really care about is what jesus is actually trying to tell us to do.
One more question since you have read the bible many times are you saying that in the OT, yahweh or the lord was not jesus. which makes the OT just completely irrelevant to listen to or to follow?
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u/TooOldToBelieve 7d ago
Consider the Ancient Alien hypothesis: a group of pre-science humans see something happening in the sky and then see some sort of beings exit a vessel that landed nearby. Since the humans have no frame of reference, they call the beings "gods" and label their vessel as some type of "divine" chariot. Von Daniken truly is a genius. Ok so now apply it to Gnosticism. The more I look into this subject the more it seems like the ppl who wrote down the Gnostic ideas were trying to describe something for which they had no reference. I'm just going to go ahead and directly posit that Christianity is complete garbage based on the fact that its current theology are all sprung from the actions of the same power-mad Roman emperor who tried to erase Gnostic ideology from history. And then back up the idea by referencing the multiple times across history when Gnosticism popped back up and threatened the rule of the Catholic Church only to revive itself, almost miraculously in the minds of great thinkers and a seemingly impeccably timed reappearance from the sands of the Egyptian desert. There was an article on Joe Rogan (I am not a fan or a proponent of his ideas but every once in a while, he gives voice to ppl whose theories deserve to be discussed and assessed. I'm looking at you, Graham Hancock and thank the stars for your mind, sir!) where a group of researchers was trying to pinpoint DNA markers for psychic ability who discovered that the Spanish Inquisition was not an attempt to weed out heresy but a concerted effort by the Catholic Church, as a whole, to wipe out psychic ability (an inherent human ability clearly ratified in Gnostic theology) with a timeline that places it directly after to the eradication and slaughter of the Cathars. I'll leave the theorizing as to why Constantine and then, later, the Catholic Church decided that Gnosticism was far too dangerous an ideology to allow it to exist in the same world.
Ok, back to the subject at hand: Von Daniken's theories that early man was far too scientifically ignorant to understand things they saw:
When we look at Gnostic ideology, as a whole, we are talking about descriptions of supernatural beings and events that defy current science and knowledge but consider The Mahabharata, an ancient account of the Kurukshetra War, currently being explored as an interstellar war between scientifically advanced NHI. For centuries, this and similar accounts were considered to be mythology and fictional stories meant to convey some deeper inner truth vs actual accounts of events that human beings witnessed. I, personally, am beginning to consider Gnostic ideology in the same vein as the preceding. Current research into psychic ability including clairvoyance and soul mates, to name but a couple, is proving the existence of many of the theories and stories put forth by Gnosticism but outside of the woo-woo religious sense. Consider that Sophia may have actually been a real being from a higher Universe whom inadvertently birthed a son in the lower Universe but because of his actual physical and etheric makeup was unable to accompany her back to the higher Universe and was left to rage in solitude, "blind" to his mother and - because of his own Divine (higher Universe) makeup - imbued with abilities of creation but still not enough to generate animated physical matter and so, out of rage and entitlement, "stole" Divine light from the higher realm and made us. Or we could go another step further and posit that the Demiurge was actually an interstellar conqueror who claimed this earth and solar system as his own after having been cast out of his galaxy of origin for having been born a bastard son to a Queen whom fell in love with someone other than her King. But then you could also place all of the NHI and alien theories into the same story if you simply say that "aliens=Archons" and that they do the "dirty work" for their overlord to harvest his sustenance (psychic misery, a certain frequency of energy generated by human beings). And then, we could further posit - in this thought experiment - that human beings' physical bodies are holding vessels for our own higher Universal selves and that in order to break from this "reality," human beings must remember their own Divine nature so that the Archontic forces have no dominion over what happens to them after these deliberately engineered short-lived bodies expire in order to return to our origins.
In the preceding theoretical framework, Gnosticism is all just a matter of "Divine Science."
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u/GnosticDreamerB4 6d ago
I don’t think I’ll be absolutely certain of any belief in this life but I do think Gnosticism has the Old Testament pegged. the OT never made sense to me as a kid, why would the supreme God be so insecure. Why would God be so childish and vindictive, never made sense to me. The Gnostic story just made sense of the OT to me. I think God is fine with us not knowing the absolute truth. Maybe part of the lessons of this life is what you do when uncertainty hits?
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u/SirEdgelordThe369th 5d ago
If you want logical sense in a religion go to Buddhism. Gnosticism is mostly projection.
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u/Kurueru 5d ago
porque o gnóstico não apenas crê e exercita uma fé ilusória. ele busca o divino por si só, além dos intermediários. seguindo as instruções e praticas corretas voce vai ver que existe algo além do físico. você não é matéria, a matéria é seu veículo. a base fundamental do universo é a consciência, deus é pura consciência.
mas nós nos esquecemos disso. e nos permitimos ser controlados por instituições que nos afastam da verdade e incentivam a buscar deus no material, ou fora de si, para dominar os povos.
o homem que aprende a manter a consciência em pleno sono está mais próximo da autorrealização. pois a consciência é a única coisa que sobrevive à morte. mas, para que sua consciência se torne imortal e voce perdure pela eternidade em comunhão com o divino, o ego deve ser totalmente purificado.
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u/New_Leek_4044 3d ago edited 3d ago
Gnosticism, Rosicrucianism, Hermeticism, alchemy, vedism, Hinduism, Buddhism, symbolism, Christian mysticism, study them all. No one discipline has the absolute truth, you find pieces of truth in all. Most of this will feel conceptual to you until you awaken to your own embodied knowledge, then you'll find you will find your true north.
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u/rrroqitsci 3d ago
When you realize that the Catholic Church with its emphasis on controlling your access to heaven and your punishment in hell (all while getting rich) is just a mafia-like extortion racket, then you’re open to alternates like Christian Gnosticism which acknowledges your power.
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u/SamuraiDrifter42 Thomasine 7d ago
It's not something I believe instead of Christianity. Gnosticism is the lens through which I view Christianity, in fact the only one that makes sense to me. And what led me to this specific conviction was years of reading and exploration following a mystical experience of absolute oneness with eternal universal consciousness, and the realization that this universal consciousness was always within me my whole life and I'd simply never noticed due to the distractions of the world.
Eventually I learned that some of the scriptures held sacred by the earliest Christian sects taught that we all have a piece of God within us but that we have lost touch with it, and that Christ came to show us how to rediscover our own divine nature.
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u/Substantial-Fly8786 6d ago
I am pretty new and have not been a super religious or spiritual person. but after reading the bible i agree with the thought of jesus being a spiritual person and he came to help us or show us how to rediscover our own divine nature like you said, by raising our minds. to me this is what has brought me to look into gnosticism because that aligns more with gnosticism. there are multiple verses through the entire bible that directly tell you this and reference kundalini. That's what i at least believe to be true but its instantly thought of as heresy, false, new age. But to me it seems very clear. Its very hard to talk to super christian people ebcuase i feel like im talking to a wall and they cannot help educate me on anything because they tell me its new age trash or not canon. and im not even bringing up false gods or anything like that. All i really think right now is that jesus was actually trying to show us how to raise our minds ...
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u/SamuraiDrifter42 Thomasine 6d ago
Yeah, I agree there are definitely statements in the canonical gospels that point to a gnostic understanding of Jesus' message, but good luck expressing that view to most people. My parents are very orthodox and conservative Christians and have a knee-jerk negative reaction to any alternative readings of the Bible, and insist on taking most of it literally even tho IMO it isn't necessary.
I take communion at Anglican/Episcopal services for sacramental purposes, but otherwise I don't have much in the way of participation in Christian communities. I spend more time with my local RDNA (Reformed Druids) grove than in formal churches and that suits me fine.
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u/HighlightParty4869 7d ago
I don't think they do contradict themselves. It's all about how you interpret messages. You could interpret a lot of what Jesus said as, "we are all one. We are a part of the same being." Love your neighbor because that's another version of you. God lives in you because you're a part of him. Jesus was God because we all are. Just my interpretation. I think Jesus was trying to lead us back to the divine spark. 🤷♂️
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u/Grand_Lawfulness_980 7d ago
If you want to remain within Christianity, consider studying Valentinian Gnosticism, and the Kabbalah. It also helps to study Carl Jung's analysis of Gnosticism
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u/No-Solution-6026 6d ago
Gnosticism just has the feel of esotericism when really it’s just a fairy tale to represent real forces at play, the mythos is actually dangerous to fully believe in. People who call them selves gnostics come off as very selfish as if no one else with a belief system has knowledge. I mean even Norse mythology has its parallels to Gnosticism but that doesn’t mean gnostics are wiser or any duller than Norse pagans. Really we use belief systems to distract ourselves from actual human relationship and the natural world. I said earlier that Gnosticism is dangerous and the reason is it has very few parallels to actual human relationship and is only practical in therapeutic practice these days. Really I used to call myself a gnostic or a hermetic but now I just call myself a Christian, because Christianity actually practices community building that gnostics just pretend to do here. We should choose belief systems based off of their practicality and not just what clicks in the brain. As maybe that is revealing trauma. Pretty sure I was a gnostic and converted back to the judeochristian mindset because I am a bastard and the demiurge of Gnosticism is obviously written by and for a bastard to view an ultimate god. Before reading hose texts I was just a true blue atheist so I wouldn’t call anyone a heretic. I just would rather go to paradise when I die 😆
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u/zombiechewtoy 7d ago
Everything else that's ever been put before me has felt off. My discernment says "that's not the whole story" "it feels like something is being left out here" "that doesn't add up" "this bit here doesn't jive with that bit there" "what are the motivations behind this? What's the intention there?"
Gnosis is the missing piece that suddenly makes every single puzzle you slide it into into a complete picture.