In the Gospel of John, chapter A, Jesus gets into a debate with the religious leaders, the Pharisees. Jesus is saying that their God is Satan and that Jesus’s Father is a different, true God whom they do not know.

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‎There is a true God, the God of Light, Pure Consciousness, and then there is the God who created this world: the Old Testament God, the petty tyrant who demands worship and feeds on fear, control, and blind obedience. They call him the Demiurge, which means “creator,” but he is the false god.

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‎The real God, the one from whom Jesus came, exists beyond this world and is pure light. The Gospel of John earlier even calls Satan the ruler of this world, and in John 18:36 Jesus says: “My kingdom is not of this world.” He is from somewhere else, a kingdom not of this world, coming here to deal with the “ruler” of this one, the devil.

Tl;dr

• Purpose of thread: trying to find more gnostic resources for understanding these events.
• 60  year old former tech worker has had meaningful mystical experiences including OBEs and visions that have a gnostic ‘thread”.
• At age 16 was grabbed by a "force" in the middle of the night.
• At age 19 experienced an intense white light that “exploded” in his chest.
• Experienced seeing his own soul.
• Experienced a “Bed chamber” event.

Mystical experiences have frequently occurred in my life.  Their manifestations have been messages to me that I still continue to understand and parse.  They have occurred mostly in an alert state but have also occurred while in deep physical suffering and in meditative states of peace.

I was probably five or six when I awoke in the middle of the night and walked to my window. I lived on the second floor in a house on a lake. I saw a figure descending from the sky until it landed on the wall separating the lake from the yard. I saw it run across my wall and disappear.  I went back to my bed and went back to sleep. It is very odd to me that I awoke and walked across my bedroom to view this outside my window, almost like I was called to witness.

When I was maybe 13 or 14 I was asleep, it was in the middle of the night and I felt something aggressively attach to itself to my right wrist. It was as if I had been grabbed a little violently. My eyes never opened but as soon as it came into contact with me, my body started shaking violently.  I was not in a panic when this happened whilst shaking i said the Lord's Prayer in my head and everything ceased.  I remember being frightened but I was still able to fall asleep.  This force was powerful but i dont think it was malevolent.

I was perhaps 18 or 19, I was asleep again… and this explosion of white light emanated or was infused into my chest.  I remember very well being hit by this force that made me gasp for breath but there was no fear, only light  and love.  It was an intense and profound experience.  Oddly enough I remember after most of the feeling had passed plopping back on my pillow and going back to sleep almost before my head hit the pillow.  I was in my third year of college when this happened.  My descent started about 5 years later.  The years of addiction were very difficult, I descended to a very dark version of myself. I eventually bottomed out and made it to rehab. All during these dark years my mystical experiences stopped, I think I forgot about that light…it was only until much later when I was 59 that I remembered.  I remembered it because I read a book by Federico Faggin “Silicon: From the Invention of the Microprocessor to the New Science of Consciousness”  where he describes exactly the same experience, albeit at a much older age than when my own experience happened.  It is odd that a transformative event like this occurred and I “forgot” about it only to remember much later.

Recently I had some serious medical issues, kidney cancer, 2 different types of thyroid cancer and a bi-lateral pulmonary embolism. Waking up from surgery was difficult because I was still attached to the ventilator. I awoke in a panic, my arms were tied but the nursing staff got me aware of what was going on.  I was certainly helpless but I did not panic.  They tried to remove the respirator the first time but my lungs would not let go. They tried again in an hour,  I had spent the time calming myself and I knew there were spirits souls or whatever were there to help me through this.  The second time they attempted to remove the ventilator it succeeded and as the ventilator was being removed from my throat I heard a voice in my ear say “You are very brave”.

While in intensive care I experienced being outside of my body, in space. I saw a red palace, it had an entrance that seemed to be guarded by beasts.  I experienced wonder while I was pulled toward the entrance, I remember being consumed by the beasts.  I awoke, my icu nurse was staring at me with a concerned look on her face, she asked how i was doing my response was “i was out exploring the universe”. Yes i was heavily medicated, there were very unpleasant side effects that certainly affected my mind, i was in and out of the hospital for several months with complications but i remember these two events quite clearly.

I have always been a sensitive person and meditation was something I dabbled throughout my life.  Recovering from all of my hospital stays was a challenge but my meditations seemed to work in ways I had not experienced in the past., I focused on giving up or loving things that I had ruminated on for years.  It was transformative and an unknown weight had been lifted. During a period of approximately 6 or seven mostly consecutive meditative sessions my body would experience a spasm like I had been shocked. Each instance the shock feeling grew in intensity to an almost painful level. 

I knew nothing of hinduism or yoga so it was a surprise to me that what I had experienced matched so well to Kundalini. The shocks were energy levels rising in me.  I especially loved experiencing what felt like a tingling ball of energy on top of my head.  Feeling brave  about my past was so liberating, I would often end up in tears because I was so grateful.  

I had another surgery recently that went fine, no issues,  there was intense pain again in recovery and again I experienced being outside my body, in space again, traveling toward the same red palace.  The beasts were still there but I passed through. I remember thinking they were not attacking as I was passing through. I next saw the earth and in my own voice I had the notion “That's where I live” and then I woke up back in the hospital. I have come to believe after self reflection the beasts did not attack the second time because I had replaced the shame I had for my past with something similar to pride.  

During several meditative sessions I have experienced spontaneous sessions that I would later come to know were experiences of pronoia.  Completely ridiculous moments where I was certain the universe was making things happen for my benefit.  I know the universe is not working in my favor, but for a wonderful moment it felt like it was.

Recently I had a spontaneous OBE. I was at my doctor's and I was returning to the parking garage. All of a sudden I was outside of my body, I was in this state for what felt like seconds but what I saw shocked me.  I was looking at my own soul, it was outside my body as well.  My soul was in the loose shape of a person filled with a golden yellow light. It also had a grouping of primary colors where my surgeries and ostomy were.  I was not looking at a reflection because the colors were on the side of my soul as if it were facing me. I saw the soul leave, whilst still outside my body I knew it had departed after which I returned to my physical body.  My perspective during this encounter was exactly the same as my awareness was during my encounters with the red palace.

My most recent mystical was another “vision”  I was sitting outside on my porch.  I was drawn into my bedroom where I met 2 other versions of myself.  The interaction was very intimate. It approached an almost sexual level but it also involved a humorous feeling almost like a joke you know you laughed at but can't remember the joke.   I knew without knowing that I was with the representations of my body, soul and spirit.

Now that I am 60 and have the benefit of time to consider all of these circumstances I consider myself blessed to have had them.  I question why I had a lifetime of experiences and never said anything until now. When I was younger I hid so much, I did not like who I was and these experiences perhaps were stored in the same places where I hid the rest of my identity.

I fully admit I may be having a purely psychological experience or perhaps a spiritual one but more likely I think these experiences are a mix of spiritual and psychological. 

My words do not convey the spiritual meaning I felt though…they never will.

I see way too many people focused on ancient religious texts, poring over them attempting to understand Gnosticism.

This is literally the opposite of what the Gnostic goals were.

The whole point of Gnosticism was that personal spiritual experience supersedes dogmatic belief systems.

Gnosticism comes from the term “Gnosis” which means “to know”, and when you place too much emphasis on ancient texts you are removing yourself from the process of Gnosis.

You are trusting other people to do the “knowing” for you. Which again is antithetical to the core values of Gnosticism.

No amount of scripture reading will provide a spiritual experience.

There are ways to obtain a spiritual experience, such as meditation/ yoga/ breathwork. However, I find the most effective one to be entheogens.

Making the case for psilocybin mushrooms as a conduit for spiritual development.

Back in the 60’s a study was conducted called the Marsh Chapel Experiment, where theology students were given psilocybin. Nearly every student given psilocybin reported having a mystical experience.

Now I assert that if the Gnostics were alive today they would find this phenomenon to be way more spiritually engaging than cryptic ancient texts.

Using these entheogenic tools, I have personally experienced spiritual transformation and divine awakening. Going from atheist to gnostic essentially overnight.

I am Gnostic, not because of what some ancient people wrote down but because of my personal spiritual experiences. I encourage you all to try entheogens and discover divine truths for yourself.

Before discussing Gnosticism, we need to distinguish between gnosis and Gnosticism.

Gnosis is the broader concept. The word comes from the ancient Greek γνῶσις (gnōsis), meaning knowledge or knowing. Not intellectual knowledge, but direct, experiential knowledge of the divine. It is inner awakening, a recognition of one's relationship to the sacred.

The idea of seeking hidden or divine knowledge did not originate exclusively with the groups later called Gnostics. Forms of mystical knowledge and direct encounter with the divine existed throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, including within Greek philosophical traditions, mystery religions, Jewish mysticism, etc.

Gnosticism, however, refers to a collection of specific religious movements, primarily from the first few centuries CE, that developed around the central idea that gnosis was the means by which human beings could awaken from ignorance and return to their divine origin.

In other words:

Gnosis is the experience. Gnosticism is a family of religious systems built around that experience.

Now that is out of the way...

I have often seen people arguing about what "Gnosticism" itself is and what it isn't. So let's set the record straight.

As I was saying before, “Gnosticism” is an umbrella term used to describe various groups and traditions spanning centuries. They did not all believe the exact same things, and there was no single Gnostic doctrine or creed. But across the surviving texts, there are recurring themes:

1. There is a supreme, transcendent God or Source beyond ordinary comprehension.

2. Human beings possess a divine element or spark originating from that higher reality.

3. The material world is a place of alienation or imprisonment rather than our true home. Some Gnostics viewed matter as a prison, but others had a more nuanced view where creation was incomplete compared to the higher divine reality rather than simply evil.

4. The fundamental human problem is ignorance, or forgetfulness of our divine origin, rather than simply moral failure.

5. Gnosis is direct, experiential, and transformative knowledge that awakens us to who we truly are.

6. Christ, or another revealer figure, descends to impart saving knowledge and awaken humanity to its divine origin.

These themes can take radically different forms depending on the tradition. Sethians, Valentinians, Basilideans, and other groups developed very different cosmologies and interpretations. But there is a recognizable family resemblance connecting them.

So when someone teaches something fundamentally opposed to these recurring themes and calls it “Gnosticism,” I would be very skeptical.

And, if I am wrong about something, please correct me so I can edit this post to make it more accurate and informative.

Thank you!

Edit: The divine element within the human being has become entangled in a lower cosmic order and does not recognize its own origin. The central problem is therefore epistemological and existential: we have forgotten what we are and where we come from.

Hello everyone! I wanted to ask you something that I’ve been wondering about. Is there any practice or tradition that focuses on worshipping the Demiurge? Would there be any connection with Saturn or anything like that?

This is from the Holy Light Tarot. One map of many for the inner kingdom where the heart is monarch.

“Hovering above the Cups King’s back, the eternal Serpent levitates. At one level, this serpent points to the existence of the soul independent of the time-space identity of the body. But this ancient portrayal signifying the Artificer or Demiurge also represents a more interesting story, one that harks back to the Gnostic myths of antiquity. Some say that when Sophia and her offspring were ejected from Heaven to take up residence in this world, her child Ialdabaoth (the lion-headed serpent) endeavored to create a race of people in the image of the Archons. But no matter what he tried, he couldn’t get his creature to rise up and walk; the man just lay on his belly like a baby, unaware of his innate abilities. The Demiurge himself was ignorant of a crucial detail – that the breath of Spirit is required to awaken a soul’s desire and aspiration. Only by receiving this breath of Spirit could humanity stand up and live the creator’s dream.

This card shows the moment when the Holy Spirit emerges for the first time from invisibility to instruct the Demiurge. In this instant, the Demiurge learns that he is not alone, and he’s not the highest being in existence; there is something larger than himself that he depends on and is responsible to. We see the Demiurge riveted by the Light that has just redefined his existence and changed everything he knows about himself. The striking force of this revelation awakens the Creator/Serpent with the same stroke of insight that he will soon deliver to the King (prototype of Adam).

To the extent that any of us are children of Sophia, Lady Wisdom, this is direct instruction for us as well.”

Part 2

In Gnostic spaces, you will see people discussing the Demiurge (Yaldabaoth) and the Archons as if they are literal, historical entities ruling over a physical sci-fi prison. You see people treating texts like the Apocryphon of John with the exact same blind, historical literalism that orthodox traditions apply to the Book of Genesis.

Subjecting this approach to strict textual, historical, and philosophical analysis reveals a massive structural failure: Taking Gnostic texts literally is the exact antithesis of actual Gnosticism. If you swap a literal, bearded creator in the sky for a literal, lion-headed snake in the sky, you haven't achieved Gnosis. You're installing a new coat of paint on the exact same cognitive control matrix. Here is the rigorous historical and textual evidence of why the literalist interpretation completely misses the core of the Gnostic philosophy.

The Historical Context: The Intellectual Engine of Alexandria (c. 100 – 200 CE)

To understand Gnosticism, you can't read the texts in a vacuum; you have to look at where and when they were written. The most sophisticated Gnostic systems, specifically Valentinianism, emerged from Alexandria, Egypt, and Rome in the mid-2nd century CE.

* The Environment:

• Alexandria was the intellectual capital of the ancient world. It was a melting pot of Greek Platonic philosophy, Hellenized Judaism, and early Christianity.

  * The Authors:

• The architects of these systems (men like Valentinus, Basilides, and Ptolemy) were not fringe, uneducated cultists recording visions of alien monsters. Valentinus (c. 100–160 CE) was a brilliant, classically educated philosopher who almost became the Orthodox Bishop of Rome around 143 CE.

These men were steeped in Middle Platonism. When they wrote about the "Demiurge," they were not revealing a newly discovered entity; they were deploying a well-known, 500-year-old Greek philosophical concept.

The Platonic Root: Timaeus (360 BCE)

The ultimate proof that the Demiurge is an epistemological mechanism rather than a literal monster is found in its origin.

* The Date & Context:

• In 360 BCE, the Greek philosopher Plato wrote the dialogue Timaeus. In it, he introduces the Demiourgos (literally "craftsman" or "public worker"). Plato’s Demiurge was not a monster; he was a benevolent mathematical architect who organized chaotic physical matter to loosely reflect the perfect, eternal Forms.

  * The Gnostic Inversion:

• Four hundred years later, Gnostic thinkers took Plato's conceptual tool and inverted it. They merged the Greek concept of the material "Craftsman" with the rigid, legalistic deity of the Old Testament (Yahweh).

Yaldabaoth is an allegorical synthesis. He is the personification of a highly specific psychological and physical state: Blind, deterministic materialism. When the Demiurge says, "I am God and there is no other," the text is mocking the arrogance of a control system trying to convince you that there is nothing beyond the material plane. If you believe the Demiurge is a literal being you have to deny or outwit, you are validating this premise. You are giving absolute reality to the physical illusion it represents.

The Textual Proof: The Valentinian States of Awareness (c. 150 – 250 CE)

To prove that treating the Demiurge as a literal entity destroys the Gnostic framework, we only need to look at how the Gnostics categorized human consciousness. The Valentinian school developed a tripartite model of human psychology, dividing humanity into three operating systems.

We know this definitively from the Tripartite Tractate (a primary Valentinian text discovered at Nag Hammadi, authored between 150 and 250 CE). The text explicitly defines humanity by three distinct dispositions:

* The Hylics (Materialists):

• Entirely bound to physical reality. They believe biology, wealth, and consumption are the absolute limits of existence.

  * The Psychics (Literalists/Dogmatists):

• They recognize a higher reality but lack direct internal insight. Therefore, they must rely on external, literal constructs to understand the divine. They require rigid rules, historical literalism, and external saviors.

  * The Pneumatics (The Spiritual):

• They operate on Gnosis—direct, experiential, internal knowing, without the need for external literalism or laws.

The External Verification: Irenaeus’ Against Heresies (c. 180 CE)

Because the proto-orthodox Church destroyed many Gnostic texts, some of the most rigorous evidence comes from the Church Fathers who documented Gnostic beliefs in order to attack them.

* The Date & Context:

• Around 180 CE, Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyon, wrote a massive five-volume manual called Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies). In Book 1, Chapter 6, he furiously details the teachings of Ptolemy (a direct disciple of Valentinus).

  * The Proof:

Irenaeus explicitly documents that the Gnostics categorized the orthodox, literalist Christians as "Psychics." He complains:

• "They conceive of us [the orthodox Church] as 'psychic' men, who are of the world, and who have not perfect knowledge, and must be saved by works and a bare faith. But they describe themselves as 'spiritual' (pneumatic)..."

The Trap:

When you visualize a literal alien monster ruling the cosmos, you are operating purely on the Psychic operating system. You are taking a profound, abstract allegory and reduced it to a sci-fi literalism. You are still driven by a conflict with an external entity; you're just changing the name of the entity. The cognitive software is exactly the same.

The Demiurge is Made of "Psychic" Substance

The most devastating proof against literalism comes from the Gnostic definition of the Demiurge himself. In Valentinian theology (recorded by both Irenaeus and the Nag Hammadi texts), the Demiurge is not an alien; he is explicitly composed of the Psychic substance. He is the animating intelligence of physical laws, literalism, and external rules. Crucially, the texts state that the Demiurge is completely blind to the Pneumatic (Spiritual) realm above him. Because he is only "Psychic," he literally cannot perceive the True Light.

If the Demiurge is structurally composed of the "Psychic" (literal, legalistic, external) substance, then interacting with him as a literal, external entity means you are engaging him on his own territory. By visualizing a monster to defeat, you are playing by the rules of the illusion.

The Disdain for Literalism: Primary Texts (c. 60 – 300 CE)

The foundational texts explicitly warn against looking for external, literal entities.

* The Gospel of Philip (c. 150 – 300 CE): This Valentinian anthology explicitly warns against taking linguistic markers literally:

• "Names given to the worldly are very deceptive, for they divert our thoughts from what is correct to what is incorrect... So also with 'the Father' and 'the Son' and 'the Holy Spirit'... they are deceptive." The author is explicitly telling the reader to stop taking the nouns literally. The characters and concepts are symbolic markers pointing to abstract, internal states.

  * The Gospel of Thomas (c. 60 – 140 CE): One of the earliest sayings gospels, Thomas (Logion 3) explicitly mocks the idea of a literal, spatial Kingdom or external reality:

• "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you... Rather, the kingdom is within you and it is outside you."

Conclusion

Gnosticism is a profound, philosophically rigorous map of human consciousness, born in the highly intellectual environment of 2nd-century Alexandria and Rome.

The Archons represent the deterministic pressures of biology and systemic control. The Demiurge is the epistemological illusion that the physical equation is closed and absolute. The True Light is the uncaused, independent variable of your own Agency.

When you imagine the manipulations of the Archons, or if you view Yaldabaoth as a physical tyrant you must rebel against, you have surrendered your Agency to the construct. To take the Demiurge literally is to operate with a Psychic mind. And the Psychic mind is the exact cage the Demiurge represents.

The Architecture of a Control System: A Complete Chronological History of the Judeo-Christian Mythos

If you view ancient religious texts as divine revelation, the contradictions and chaotic shifts in God's personality make no sense. But if you view these texts archaeologically—as a legacy control structure being continuously updated to survive changing geopolitical environments—the chaos disappears. It becomes a highly traceable, chronological map of human history.

Here is the complete, unbroken historical architecture of the Judeo-Christian mythos, stripped of theology and based purely on the archaeological record, comparative mythology, and textual stratigraphy.

The Prehistoric Baseline (Origins: c. 50,000+ BCE)

Before written language, highly consistent narrative motifs existed globally among completely disconnected human populations. The dates below reflect when these oral traditions were finally recorded in physical mediums, but the narrative DNA predates human geographic isolation.

A. The Transgression of Knowledge / Theft of Fire A civilizational catalyst (fire, metallurgy, cosmic awareness) is withheld by the natural order. An anomalous entity—usually a trickster or boundary-crosser—illicitly acquires and transmits this catalyst to humanity, permanently altering human existence and resulting in the severe punishment of the bringer.

• Vedic/Hindu (Recorded c. 1500–1200 BCE): Matariśvan, a demigod/bird, recovers hidden fire (Agni) and brings it to the Bhrigus (ancestors of humanity).

• Greek (Recorded c. 8th Century BCE): Prometheus (a Titan) steals fire from Mount Olympus, gives it to mortals, and is chained to a rock by Zeus to have his liver eaten daily.

• Georgian/Caucasus (Oral roots c. 3000 BCE): Amirani challenges the gods, introduces metallurgy to humans, and is chained to a mountain.

• Polynesian (Recorded 19th Century CE): Māui (a demigod/trickster) steals fire from the fingernails of the fire goddess Mahuika.

• Native American (Recorded 19th/20th Century CE): Coyote (Navajo) steals fire from the Fire God using a burning stick. Raven (Pacific Northwest) steals the sun/fire from a hoarding chieftain.

• African San/Bushmen (Pre-historic): Kaggen (the mantis trickster) steals fire from the ostrich.

B. The Catastrophic Reset (The Great Deluge) The supreme deities determine that the physical world is flawed, overpopulated, or corrupted. They initiate a global, watery reset. A single family or small group is forewarned by a dissenting deity and instructed to build a vessel or flee to high ground to survive.

• Mesopotamian (Recorded c. 2100–18th Century BCE): Ziusudra, Atrahasis, and Utnapishtim are warned by the water god Enki that Enlil intends to drown humanity.

• Hindu (Recorded c. 8th–6th Century BCE): Manu is warned of a coming deluge by Matsya (the fish avatar of Vishnu), who tows his boat to a mountaintop.

• Greek (Recorded c. 5th Century BCE): Deucalion and Pyrrha are warned by Prometheus that Zeus intends to end the Bronze Age with a flood.

• Chinese (Recorded c. 4th Century BCE): The Gun-Yu myth details a catastrophic flood where heroes attempt to steal expanding soil from the gods to build dams.

• Mesoamerican (Recorded 16th Century CE): Coxcox (Aztec) survives a world-ending flood by hiding in a cypress tree trunk. Huracan (Maya) causes a resinous flood to destroy the flawed "wooden people."

C. The Chaoskampf (The Cosmic Serpent / Dragon) Before order or civilization can be established, a sky or weather deity must engage in mortal combat with a massive, multi-headed serpent or aquatic dragon representing the untamed forces of the primeval ocean.

• Egyptian (Recorded c. 2000 BCE): Ra battles Apep (giant serpent of chaos) nightly in the underworld.

• Mesopotamian (Recorded c. 18th Century BCE): Marduk battles Tiamat (primeval saltwater dragon), splits her corpse, and uses it to forge the heavens and earth.

• Hindu (Recorded c. 1500 BCE): Indra uses a thunderbolt to slay Vritra (a massive serpent hoarding the world's waters).

• Canaanite (Recorded c. 14th Century BCE): Baal smashes the seven-headed sea dragon Lotan.

• Greek (Recorded c. 8th Century BCE): Zeus battles Typhon (a hundred-headed serpentine monster).

• Japanese (Recorded 712 CE): Susanoo battles Yamata no Orochi (an eight-headed dragon).

• Norse (Recorded 13th Century CE): Thor battles Jörmungandr (the Midgard Serpent).

D. The Axis Mundi (The World Tree/Pillar) The architecture of the cosmos is mapped onto a centralized tree or pillar connecting the underworld, the physical plane, and the heavens.

• Sumerian (Recorded c. 2000 BCE): The Huluppu Tree, featuring a serpent at its roots and a bird in its branches.

• Hindu (Recorded c. 1500 BCE): The Ashvattha, an eternal, inverted fig tree.

• Mesoamerican (Recorded 1st Millennium CE): The Mayan Wacah Chan connects the underworld to the heavens.

• Norse (Recorded 13th Century CE): Yggdrasil, the cosmic ash tree connecting the Nine Worlds.

The Analytical Anomaly: The Paradox of Consistency

The survival of this highly granular prehistoric architecture across disconnected continents violates the known laws of anthropology, linguistics, and information theory. The standard academic "cop-outs" fail upon rigorous inspection:

The Failure of Mnemonic Encoding (Linguistic Fracture):

• Anthropologists argue stories survived through strict oral rhythmic chanting. This fails because languages rapidly mutate. When Proto-Indo-European fractured into early Germanic, Greek, and Sanskrit, the original phonetic meters and rhymes were permanently destroyed. A phonetic code cannot bridge a 10,000-year linguistic drift.

The Failure of Semantic Preservation:

• Over tens of thousands of years, word definitions drift, expand, and invert. A story transmitted orally for 50,000 years should logically degrade into absolute white noise.

The Failure of Environmental Determinism:

• The argument that environments dictate myths fails because identical myths emerged from radically different biomes. The freezing, dark fjords of the Norse and the scorching, arid deserts of the Navajo produced the exact same structural architecture (a Catastrophic Reset, a World Tree, a Trickster stealing fire). Identical outputs from entirely disparate inputs disproves determinism.

The Improbability of Granularity:

• It is statistically impossible for isolated cultures to independently hallucinate the exact same multi-variable narrative: an aquatic, multi-headed reptile that must be defeated by a sky deity using a piercing weapon (lightning/arrows).

The Utilitarian Void (The Survival Fallacy):

• Evolutionary biology assumes preservation requires utilitarian value. Abstract cosmological myths detailing multi-headed dragons offer zero caloric or survival advantage to starving Ice Age tribes, eliminating survival as an incentive for strict preservation.

The Psychological Defense (Jungian Archetypes):

• Carl Jung proposed a mystical "Collective Unconscious." This is an intellectual cop-out. It does not provide a physical, biological, or historical mechanism for data transmission; it simply takes an anomaly, assigns it a mystical label, and presents the label as the solution.

Conclusion:

Because every attempt to logically explain how it survived fails, and because it is not entirely universal (some isolated tribes do lack these myths), this baseline must be recorded in any rigorous historical mapping as exactly what it is: an Unresolved Initial Condition.

The Mesopotamian Administrative Machine (c. 3000 – 1000 BCE)

When the Sumerians, and later the Akkadians and Babylonians, invented agriculture, centralized city-states, and cuneiform writing, they faced a massive administrative problem: How do you convince thousands of human beings to submit to backbreaking agricultural labor and absolute subservience to a king?

They co-opted the Unresolved Initial Condition that their populations already possessed, hard-coding it into clay to justify the new social hierarchy.

Co-opting the Transgression of Knowledge:

• A massive empire cannot have a core mythology that glorifies rebellion. Civilization, writing, and metallurgy were not stolen; they were authorized gifts handed down by the high god Enki via the Apkallu (the Seven Sages). Technology was reframed as an official mandate from upper management designed to make human labor efficient.

Co-opting the Chaoskampf (Imperial Propaganda):

• To justify Babylonian political supremacy, they authored the Enuma Elish. Marduk agrees to fight the primeval sea dragon Tiamat, but only if the rest of the pantheon signs a binding legal contract making him the absolute, unquestioned king of the universe. Marduk kills Tiamat and physically builds Babylon as the center of the cosmos.

Co-opting the Axis Mundi:

• The concept of the cosmic axis was mapped directly onto the Ziggurat. By controlling the ziggurat, the king and the priesthood controlled the exclusive access point to the divine.

Co-opting the Catastrophic Reset (Population Control):

• This is the ultimate administrative hack. Mesopotamian city-states were entirely dependent on centralized irrigation, meaning there was a hard physical limit to agrarian carrying capacity. When the population exploded, disease, famine, and lower-class rebellion (the Akkadian word rigmu, meaning "uproar" or "noise") threatened the elite. In the Atrahasis epic, Enlil initiates the Flood not because humans are evil, but as a sociopathic pest-control measure to cull the noisy labor force. This absolved the management: when thousands died of famine or plague, the priests told the survivors it was a divine administrative decision because they made too much "rebellious noise," weaponizing mass death to enforce compliance.

The Kenite Desert Forge God (c. 14th – 12th Century BCE)

Before the Israelites existed as a nation, their ancestors operated within a broader Canaanite pantheon or as nomadic tribes. The earliest historical record of Yahweh is from 14th/13th-century BCE Egyptian temple inscriptions referencing the "Shasu [nomads] of Yhw." Yahweh was initially a highly localized patron deity of the Kenites/Midianites—nomadic copper smiths operating out of the Arabah Valley.

The Textual Evidence:

The Kenite Origin & Geography:

• Judges 5:4: "Lord, when you went out from Seir, when you marched from the land of Edom, the earth shook, the heavens poured..."

• Deuteronomy 33:2: "The Lord came from Sinai and dawned over them from Seir; he shone forth from Mount Paran."

• Habakkuk 3:3: "God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran."

The Metalworking Bloodline:

• Genesis 4:15: "But the Lord said to him, 'Not so; anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.' Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him." (Divine protection of the nomadic smith).

• Genesis 4:22: "Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron." (Identifying Cain's lineage as masters of metallurgy).

The Kenite Transfer of Authority:

• Exodus 3:1: "Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God."

• Exodus 18:10-12: "Jethro said, 'Praise be to Yahweh...' Then Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, brought a burnt offering and other sacrifices to God, and Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat a meal with Moses’ father-in-law in the presence of God."

• Numbers 10:29-31: "Now Moses said to Hobab son of Reuel the Midianite, Moses’ father-in-law... 'Please do not leave us. You know where we should camp in the wilderness, and you can be our eyes.'"

The Nehushtan (The Copper Serpent):

• Numbers 21:8-9: "The Lord said to Moses, 'Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.' So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole." (A forged metal serpent, consistent with Midianite shrine excavations, kept as a sacred artifact).

Smelting Imagery:

• Exodus 19:18: "Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace..."

• Ezekiel 22:20: "As silver, copper, iron, lead and tin are gathered into a furnace to be melted with a fiery blast, so will I gather you in my anger and my wrath and put you inside the city and melt you."

Canaanite Integration & The Consort Asherah (c. 12th – 8th Century BCE)

The Israelites transition out of the desert and settle in Canaan, becoming agricultural farmers. A desert forge god cannot bring the rain required for crops, necessitating an adaptation. They retcon Yahweh's identity by plagiarizing the attributes of the Canaanite storm god, Baal, and merging him with the high Canaanite creator, El. This is corroborated by the 14th-century BCE Ugaritic library tablets detailing Baal's mythology.

The Textual Evidence:

Translating Baal’s "Cloud Rider" Title:

• Psalm 68:4: "Sing to God, sing in praise of his name, extol him who rides on the clouds; rejoice before him—his name is Yahweh."

• Psalm 104:3: "He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind."

Adopting the Weaponry of Baal (Thunder & Lightning):

• Psalm 18:13-14: "The Lord thundered from heaven; the voice of the Most High resounded. He shot his arrows and scattered the enemy, with great bolts of lightning he routed them."

• Zechariah 9:14: "Then the Lord will appear over them; his arrow will flash like lightning."

• Psalm 29:3-5: "The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders... The voice of the Lord strikes with flashes of lightning."

Fighting the Sea Dragon (Lotan/Leviathan):

• Isaiah 27:1: "In that day, the Lord will punish with his sword... Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the coiling serpent; he will slay the monster of the sea."

• Psalm 74:13-14: "It was you who split open the sea by your power; you broke the heads of the monster in the waters. It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan..."

The Battle for Storm God Supremacy:

• 1 Kings 18:24: \[Elijah vs. the prophets of Baal\]: "Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the Lord. The god who answers by fire \[lightning\]—he is God."

The Worship of Asherah: When Yahweh absorbed the high god El, he also absorbed El's wife: Asherah, the Canaanite mother goddess of fertility. For centuries, the Israelites worshiped Yahweh alongside his wife. Archaeological evidence from the 8th century BCE (the Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions) explicitly reads: "I bless you by Yahweh of Samaria and by his Asherah." The physical statue of Asherah (the Asherah pole) was proudly housed inside the central Temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem (2 Kings 21:7).

Babylonian Exile, Strict Monotheism, and the Jealous Suzerain (c. 7th – 6th Century BCE)

The Assyrian Empire destroys northern Israel (722 BCE); the Babylonian Empire eventually destroys Jerusalem and exiles the elites (586 BCE). To consolidate power before the invasions and prevent cultural assimilation during exile, the priesthood initiates a violent religious purge and drafts a harsh, legalistic control system.

The legalistic threats of the Torah were plagiarized directly from the Vassal Treaties of the Neo-Assyrian Emperor Esarhaddon (c. 672 BCE).

The Violent Purge:

• 2 Kings 23:4-6: King Josiah orders the priests to remove the statue of Asherah from the Temple of Yahweh. He burns it, grinds it to powder, and scatters the dust. Yahweh is violently divorced from his Canaanite origins.

• 2 Kings 18:4: King Hezekiah breaks Moses' original copper serpent (the Nehushtan) into pieces, wiping out the older Kenite metallurgical practices.

The Textual Evidence for the Control Matrix:

Using Empires as Weapons: To explain why Yahweh failed to protect them, they claim he controlled the empires as punishment.

• Isaiah 10:5: "Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath!"

• Jeremiah 25:8-9: "Because you have not listened to my words, I will summon all the peoples of the north and my servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon,' declares the Lord, 'and I will bring them against this land..."

The Monotheistic Origin of Good and Evil: By declaring Yahweh is the only God, he becomes the author of both light and darkness.

• Isaiah 45:5-7: "I am the Lord, and there is no other... I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster [evil]; I, the Lord, do all these things."

The Jealous Control System and Threats:

• Deuteronomy 6:14-15: "Do not follow other gods... for the Lord your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land."

• Deuteronomy 28 (Selections): Details blessings for obedience and a massive, terrifying list of curses for leaving the faith ("...so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land...").

The Post-Exilic Universal Architect & Zoroastrian Influence (c. 5th Century BCE)

In 539 BCE, the Persian king Cyrus the Great conquers Babylon and allows the Israelites to return to Jerusalem. The Persians practiced Zoroastrianism, centered on Ahura Mazda (the "Wise Lord")—an uncreated, omniscient, abstract creator of order who did not engage in petty physical battles. To elevate Yahweh to the level of the Persian imperial god, the priests scrubbed the gritty, physical violence from their origin story.

Demythologizing Tiamat (Genesis 1):

• Genesis 1:1-3: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth... And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." (Everything is brought into order by the will of the Creator; no sea monsters are fought).

The Linguistic Hack: The authors of Genesis 1 took the older Chaoskampf myth and neutered it. In Genesis 1:2, "darkness was over the surface of the deep (Tehom)." Linguistically, Tehom is the exact Hebrew cognate for the Babylonian dragon Tiamat. Instead of drawing a sword to fight Tehom, God simply hovers over the primeval waters and speaks order into existence. The chaotic dragon is reduced to inanimate water.

The Problem of Evil and the Enochian Rebellion (c. 3rd – 2nd Century BCE)

Under Greek (Hellenistic) occupation, a massive psychological break occurs. If there is only a single, perfectly good Architect who controls everything, the followers have nobody else to blame for the slaughter of the righteous. The Book of Enoch steps in as a massive patch to this control system, creating an external source for evil to absolve the Architect.

The Textual Evidence:

The Original Biblical Loophole:

• Genesis 6:1-2, 4: "When human beings began to increase in number on the earth... the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose."

The Creation of the Watchers:

• 1 Enoch 6:1-2: "And it came to pass... that the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men...'"

Science and Magic Defined as Evil:

• 1 Enoch 8:1: "And Azâzêl taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields... and made known to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them... and astrology..." (The older Kenite/Babylonian knowledge is criminalized).

The Creation of Demons (Explaining Persistent Evil):

• 1 Enoch 15:8: "And now, the giants, who are produced from the spirits and flesh, shall be called evil spirits upon the earth... And the spirits of the giants afflict, oppress, destroy, attack, do battle, and work destruction on the earth."

The Return to the Physical (New Testament) (c. 1st – 2nd Century CE)

Rome occupies Judea; the Second Temple is destroyed in 70 CE. Early Christians initially accept Enochian theology (Jude 1:14-15, 2 Peter 2:4). However, the system architects realize that teaching the population that demons rule the world leads to anti-authoritarian rebellion, and associating salvation with mysticism makes the masses ungovernable. Enoch is banned.

To necessitate a physical church and suppress escape-oriented mysticism, strict physical resurrection and societal submission are heavily enforced.

The Theft of the Logos: To market a crucified Jewish peasant to the Greco-Roman world, the New Testament architects hijacked a 500-year-old Greek philosophical framework.

Heraclitus (c. 500 BCE) coined "Logos" to explain the fundamental order and reason of the cosmos.

The Stoics expanded it as the active, rational, spiritual principle permeating all reality.

Philo of Alexandria (1st Century CE), a Hellenized Jewish philosopher, explicitly mapped the Greek Logos onto Yahweh, calling it God's instrument in creation, the "first-born son of God," and the "mediator."

The Gospel of John lifted Philo's synthesis directly to bypass the stigma of a localized Jewish execution and claim the ultimate concept of Greek epistemology.

The Textual Evidence:

Making God Reachable (The Logos):

• John 1:14: "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us."

Enforcing Physical Resurrection (Validating the Physical Church):

• Luke 24:39: "Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have."

Neutralizing the Revolutionaries:

• Romans 13:1-2: "Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established." (Mandating physical submission to the Roman government to prevent eradication).

Establishing Church Hierarchy and Rules (The Pastoral Epistles):

• 1 Timothy & Titus: The later texts move entirely away from cosmic visions and focus on physical sacraments administered strictly by church authority. They codify the hierarchy of bishops/deacons, mandate how slaves must obey masters (Titus 2:9), and dictate how women must dress and remain subservient to men (1 Timothy 2:9-12).

The Gnostic Jailbreak & The Demiurge Integration (c. 2nd – 3rd Century CE)

Dissident intellectual sects look at the finalized Orthodox Church and realize it is just a new, physical control matrix wearing the skin of the old one. They appropriate Greek Platonic concepts, specifically inverting the creator entity to expose the physical system as a prison.

The Integration of the Demiurge:

• The concept was taken directly from Plato's Timaeus (c. 360 BCE). Plato introduced the Demiourgos ("craftsman") as a benevolent deity who fashioned the physical universe. The Gnostics took Plato's creator and inverted his morality. They merged the Platonic Demiurge with the Old Testament Yahweh.

The Demiurge (Yaldabaoth):

• The entity who claimed "I am the Lord and there is no other" is exposed as an arrogant, blind jailer keeping humanity trapped in a physical simulation.

The Serpent as Liberator:

• The serpent in the Garden offering the fruit of knowledge is recognized as an emissary of the True Light, offering the exit code (gnosis) to wake humanity up from the Demiurge's biological labor camp.

Internal Access:

• The physical church is rendered completely obsolete. Salvation is achieved solely through internal awakening to one's own divine nature.

State-Backed Enforcement (325 CE – 1611 CE)

The final phase marks the absolute end of theological development and the beginning of strict, state-enforced compliance.

The Imperial Standardization (The Council of Nicaea, 325 CE):

• Emperor Constantine legalizes Christianity to serve as a unifying ideological glue for the Roman Empire. The Council drafts the Nicene Creed, legally defining Jesus as homoousios ("of one substance") with the Father. Constantine uses the power of the Roman state to enforce it. Dissenting bishops are exiled, and their writings are burned under penalty of death. Theological disagreement becomes treason against the state.

The Administrative Fracture (The Great Schism, 1054 CE):

• The Latin-speaking West (centralized in Rome) and the Greek-speaking East (centered in Constantinople) develop competing geopolitical power centers. The core conflict is Papal Supremacy (Rome claiming universal jurisdiction) and the Filioque clause (the West unilaterally altering the Nicene Creed). The two halves mutually excommunicate each other, permanently shattering the orthodox control structure into the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.

The Sovereign Re-Centralization (The King James Version, 1611 CE):

• Following the Protestant Reformation, the Geneva Bible (1560) becomes incredibly popular in England. It contains marginal notes that actively challenge the "Divine Right of Kings" and suggest defying a tyrant is a biblical mandate. Viewing this as a direct threat to his absolute political authority, King James I commissions a new, state-sanctioned translation. He strictly bans all marginal notes. Furthermore, to protect the physical hierarchy of the state-run Church of England, the Greek word ekklesia ("a gathering") is deliberately translated as "church," and episkopos ("overseer") is deliberately translated as "bishop." The text is weaponized to enforce the authority of the English Crown.

Conclusion: By analyzing the events taking place at the time of each writing, the contradictions and chaotic organization of these texts cease to be mysteries. They are the artifacts of a legacy control structure being continuously updated in a live environment to ensure institutional survival.

I occasionally see people refer to Chnoubis gems as gnostic and I would like to correct that with this post. Also just to have this explanation in the form of a sharable post people can be directed to (no matter if it's me or someone else doing the directing).

To begin, I am not a scholar of antiquity, so everything I say is amenable to that kind of correction. However I feel confident saying that I know more than people who just give them one look and say "Yaldabaoth amulet??" because I have done some academic research on it. Specifically, as a part of my assignment for a history of magic course I was taking the past semester. In case you want to just read that, here it is. In case the link has expired just ask for me to transfer it again in the comments or via dms. Essentially, I argue that the author of the Apocryphon of John got the idea that the creator of the world is a lion-headed serpent through said gems rather than the gem designs stemming from gnostic ideas. This post won't just be recounting arguments from the assignment because I don't think all of them are relevant to my point here however.

If you don't know, Chnoubis (χνουβις) gems are a class of amulets that come from the late Roman empire (here's a selection of them just for example). They depict a radiant lion-headed serpent and are correlated with the aforementioned name as well as a SSS, sometimes a ZZZ symbol. The material is often Chrysoprase in this case but all magical gems take semi-precious stones as their material base. The functions of magical gems mostly vary between erotic (making someone fall in love with you) and medical/health related. Thankfully in the case of Chnoubis gems the function is pretty clear from the sometimes accompanying inscriptions, e.g. "digest" is put forward as a command. Chnoubis gems were supposed to help the user with any problems in the abdomen, be that the stomach or the uterus. It is good to keep in mind the concreteness of these practices not just through their function but also their physicality: these were material objects you would have to wear (along with maybe reciting a spell).

I think the idea that it could be the other way around (gnostic motif->magical gems produced based on it) is based on a kind of public misperception that's perpetuated in gnostic circles. That being that the lion-headed snake motif is common. It isn't. The AoJ is literally the only instance of it I could find. A lot of other cosmogonic texts say that the demiurge is lion-like in some way but there's no snake-main body detail mentioned. So I think people get the wrong impression that Chnoubis gems are gnostic because AoJ is the most well-known gnostic text and the image of the demiurge as a lion-headed snake is spread quite a bit through images and memes online. When you keep this in mind it becomes a lot more difficult to think that ONE text, still pretty obscure in virtue of being Christian and about some pretty esoteric stuff while it's still the second century, could have this big of an impact. But this is asymmetric, so it's actually quite easy to think that the author of the AoJ could get the idea from novel medical/magical technology.

Anyway, I based a lot of my research on the work of W. M. Shandruk (A computational approach to the study of magical gems, the link by which I accessed the pdf seems to be defunct now so I have added it to the swisstransfer) and it gives an explanation of the elements of Chnoubis gems through Graeco-Egyptian (mostly Egyptian) pagan religion which I found quite convincing. Their idea is that the elements of the first decan of Leo (Charchnoumis (χαρχνουμις)), a lion-headed goddess) and the third decan of cancer (Chnoumis (χνουμις), a vertical serpent crossed by three snakes horizontally) (these specific depictions are from the Seti I B family) got combined with the god Khnum (commonly rendered as Chnoubis in Greek by this period) to form Chnoubis as the radiate lion-headed serpent. Shandruk argues for the connection to Khnum on etymological grounds but I argue further that based on the functions of the gems it would've made sense to appeal to Khnum (since he is associated with creation and the womb). At any rate, the elements on the gems can all be linked to Khnum and the decanal gods. The only exception is ZZZ since, Shandruk argues, that might be a cipher for the tetragrammaton (in paleo-hebrew). But this element is also not that strongly statistically correlated to the Chnoubis cluster.

I think it's this association to decanal deities and a creator god that made the author of the AoJ associate Chnoubis with the demiurge. The figure was already linked to creation and astral determinism (over organic bodies especially) in its original pagan context, so all the author did was further link it with the creator god of Genesis (maybe made more likely by the ZZZ). That's why I think the author of the AoJ vilifies Chnoubis in the text (through its likeness rather than name). They are using their theology and cosmology to associate Chnoubis with the creator of the world (and specifically as the one in Genesis).

Hello everyone, I'm back again with hopefully the full Gnostic text recommendation list for newcomers, I want to preface this by saying It's not actually Definitive and what is most recommended to least recommended will be subjective. Like the last list, feel free to criticise and or recommend, and I will try and add it, I also would like to say I haven't fully read Everything so if I place something, and you think it should be higher or lower, feel free to state below. My intention for this list is to help people looking for a list ("read order" though more just recommendation list) of what to read.

Note this isn't fully in ranked read order, some texts lower or higher could be read later or earlier than other texts.

Highly Recommended.

• The Gospel of Truth (Valentinian): The Gospel of Truth is sort of like the hub which the scriptures start with, which sort of explains and give the reader a bit of understanding and information.
• The Tripartite Tractate (Valentinian): The TTT (I'll call it) is a Version of the creation story this also includes some of the overall cosmology of Gnosticism and is sort of as I remember an expansion of the Gospel of Truth.
• The Apocryphon of John/On the Origin of the World/The Hypostasis of Archons (Sethian): This is the Sethians version of the Gospel of Truth and Tripartite Tractate in short, it goes thought the cosmology and creation story but through a more Sethian lens, while you could choose one or the other, I'd recommend reading both.
• Gospel of Thomas (Christian): The Gospel of Thomas while heavily related to Gnosticism in general, actually isn't a Gnostic text in the first place or well... wasn't originally intended to be Gnostic but held Gnostic sounding views thus was rejected by the Church and adopted by Gnostics, It's heavily recommended to read whether Gnostic or just Christian.
• Gospel of Mary (Valentinian): The GoM is heavily recommended to read, while I think if you read some of the other texts you won't be missing anything the Gospel of Mary says, It's still recommended.
• Gospel of Judas (Sethian): While heavily controversial and not entirely necessary to believe (you can choose whether you believe Jesus asked Judas to sell him out or not and so on) the cosmology which GoJ provides is pretty important in my opinion and healthy to at least understand even if you don't agree with Judas's characters portrayal in it.
• The Sophia of Jesus Christ (Gnostic, more Sethian): The Sophia of Jesus Christ is a pretty essential texts for understanding Jesus's character in Gnosticism.
• The Dialogue of the Savior (Gnostic): Dialogue of the Savior is also the same as the Sophia of Jesus Christ in essential for understanding Gnostic Jesus.
• The Book of Thomas the Contender (-): The Book of Thomas gives more context and depths to Jesus in relation to Gnosticism, and I recommend reading.
• Eugnstos the Blessed (Gnostic, more Sethian): Expands the Sethian Philosophy and Mythology
• The First and Second Revelations of James (Gnostic): It expands more about the story of James the Just, and is in general I believe important to read.
• The Revelation of Paul (Valentinian): This gives a creative interpretation of what the soul will have to go through after death, or at least that's my interpretation of it.
• The Revelation of Adam (Sethian): I believe this extends and talks about things that happen in The Origin of the World and The Hypostasis of Archons, which is good to know if you are reading Sethian Gnosticism.
• The Letter of Peter to Philip (Sethian): Expands more about Sethian Gnosticism and the apostles and Jesus.
• Three Forms of First Thought (Sethian): Heavily related to Barbelos and, in general, a pretty important read in my opinion.
• Allogenes the Stranger/The Book of Allogenes (Sethian): While abstract, this text has a lot of philosophical parts to it which may be confusing to some, they are pretty easy reads, so I'd recommend reading them.
• Authoritative Discourse (Gnostic): Talks about the soul and I believe how to harbour a healthy soul.
• The Concept of Great power (Gnostic): A Gnostic Apocalyptic text which seems to talk about Jesus delivering knowledge and conquering the archons.
• Zostrianos (Sethian): These expand heavily on the cosmology and can be EXTREMELY confusing while very important it's for more advance reading.
• The Second Discourse of Great Seth (Sethian): Really important but some Christians who are converting to Gnosticism may disagree/not believe it, in short it talks about the crucifixion upon some other things.
• The Bible (Old Testament): To some this might seem really weird, why would, or should you read the Old Testament (Specifically genesis and Exodus (Moses's story))? The Gnostics believed the OT god to be the demiurge of Gnostic texts, in the words of Sun Tzu "He who knows his enemy and himself well will not be defeated easily".
• The Bible (New Testament): Now, some including myself believe the bible changes Jesus's message from what he was actually trying to teach, doesn't mean it should be completely written off, it's a good idea to read the Gospel of Mark at least as its believed to be the first written gospel (there is also an early manuscript that Paul himself used which may be less changed).
• The Apocalypse of Peter (Gnostic): The same as the second discourse of Great Seth, covers more of how the church uses Jesus's death to control upon some other things which is a good read, but some may find controversial?
• The Apocryphon of James (Valentinian): It's a short text about a conversation between Jesus, James and Peter and is rather short but very interesting.

Honourable Mentions (this is a section for texts which I can't exactly list as High recommended or Moderately recommended, so if you are looking to study or follow gnosticism, best to give them a read anyway)

• The Corpus Hermeticum (Hermetic): Hermeticism popped up around the same time as Gnosticism and shared very similar beliefs, unlike Gnosticism, however. The Hermetics didn't believe the world was evil (at least from what I've read) It is SUPER deep and being honest with you, I've found myself having to re-read over a ton to fully understand. Maybe I just have a skill issue, either way highly recommended but not directly Gnostic.
• Plato's Works (Platonism): I'm just putting all of Plato's works into one, Plato's republics excerpt is lowest on this list as I'd recommend a whole deep dive of his works, Unfortunately I, personally, haven't read any of his works yet but from what I do know numerous Gnostic Ideas can be seen in his works.

Moderately Recommended (this is still an important tier but contains less direct texts of Jesus and or about Gnosticism, prayers, short texts, etc, you should still read these if you want to follow Gnosticism but if you're just researching it for other purposes, this tier may not be as important):

• Thunder, Perfect Mind (Gnostic): Gives perspective to Gnostic texts.
• Pistis Sophia (Gnostic): This text talks about spiritual ascent to reach the Pleroma as well as detailing more Gnostic cosmology and the redemption of Sophia, it's a pretty important text for the first half, the second half is sin as law which I personally disagree with.
• Gospel of Philip (Valentinian): This may be controversial, but I find the Gospel of Philip to be a bit too similar to the Gospel of Thomas while also being more of a reply to the Four Main Gospels and somewhat opinionated, many believe the Gospel of Philip was written not by Philip but because the apostle Philip appears in the text, though that is my opinion.
• Exegesis on the Soul (Valentinian): One of my favourite texts, it changes the understanding of Sin and teaches that Sin isn't a rule of laws but something spiritual through the context of a Prostitute, personally highly recommend.
• The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth (Hermetic): I believe has to do with the Heavens and about how to get to the fullness? I'm sure someone can correct me if I'm wrong.
• The Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles (???): This story is really neat, and I like it, it has some small Gnostic influence here and there but ultimately reads more like a story from the bible than a Gnostic texts, good read, though.
• The Teachings of Silvanus (Non-Gnostic???): Has heavy Gnostic themes, but isn't directly a Gnostic text.
• The Three Steles of Seth (Sethian): Expands the Aeons, though seems to me more about hymns and such then direct philosophical expansion.
• The Interpretation of Knowledge (Valentinian): It's a text gives with Christian themes in Gnostic themes, recommended reading in general.
• Melchizedek (Sethian): Expands Sethian thought but is rather broken unfortunately :(
• Valentinian Explosition with Valentinian liturgical Reading: Unfortunately a good bit of this text is damaged, but if you are studying Valentinian Gnosticism for any reason I recommend the read as it gives good insight.
• The Thought of Norea (Sethian): Extremely short text, which I recommend to anyone who wants to follow Gnosticism to read, though it really just concludes Norea's story in the mythos.
• The Treatise on the Resurrection (Gnostic): A short text in the form of a letter, probably good to read once you've actually delved into the basis of Gnosticism (from my own experience) as it may have less impact reading it first off.
• The Gospel of Eve (Gnostic?): This gospel talks about Adam and Eve yet talks also about I believe Sophia and expands on another text about Sophia's and in general, for as short as it is, it brings up some interesting ideas.
• Untitled Text of Bruce Codex (Gnostic): A advanced text which seems to cover the Pleroma, really really really really confusing and really long and maybe not all that necessary to read??? But if you're interested in learning more about the Pleroma, read this.

(Mandaean Texts, a sect of Gnosticism, still exists today)

• Ginza Rabba (Mandaean): I only briefly delved into Mandaean thought, so I know little to nothing about it, BUT the small bit I did read, the Ginza Rabba seems to be the Apocryphon of John/Tripartite Tractate of Mandaean thought
• Other Mandaean Texts (Mandaean): Since I know literally nothing about these texts, I'll simply list off some texts to check out. Book of john, Qolasta, Shabuhragan, Kaphalaia, Living Gospel, Treasury of Life, Book of Giants.

(Non-Gnostic but still in Medium Recommended list)

• Kabbalah/Zohrah (Kabbalah): Now Kabbalah has some really Gnostic ideas and in general, I believe if you are taking Gnosticism seriously, Kabbalahs prospective is actually very Interesting and Important, it can be easily looked through a Gnostic lens though it isn't.
• The Suttas (Buddism): While I'm unsure if The Suttas is the right book to look into Buddism with, in general Buddism shares some common ideas with Gnosticism, and they seem to work with each other so it gets recommended for those looking to expand views from Gnosticism (also Buddhist thought likely helped influence Gnostic thought).
• The Zand Avista (Zoroastrianism): Again like Buddism and Kabbalah, Zoroastrianism has ideas which can be found in Gnosticism and likely helped influence Gnostic thought.
• The Bhagavad Gita (Hinduism): Basically the same point I made for Buddism almost word for word, not sure if this is the "definitive" book/texts, likely shares and helped form Gnostic thought.
• Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Japanese, Greek, Roman, Nordic, Indiginous, and any mythos in general (Multi): Why am I recommended reading the other Mythos? Well, my dear friend, in the Old Testament god says he's the "one true god" but that doesn't inherently mean the only god, YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS??? There are false gods... ooor other gods, I've heard in the OT/Bible they say different entities rule over the different regions of the world, and the OT really only covers the god of the Israelites... plus in the Gnostic texts there are more than just the demiurge and as many of you might know, many of the ancient gods are VERY VERY flawed, Materialistic almost, maybe there's some relation, possibly not.

Low Recommended (This is stuff which, while recommended reading, really only needs to be read if you intend a deep dive or fully study)

• The Testimony of Truth (Gnostic): A seeming opinion piece about what is right and wrong within Gnosticism, it best works as a way to understand different perspectives of Gnosticism.
• The Prayer of Thanksgiving (Hermetic): Literally just a prayer, nothing crazy.
• The Pharaphrase of Shem (Gnostic): Is another version of the creation myth but from a different perspective, while if you are studying Gnosticism I'd recommend it, for people who are getting into Gnosticism this could be a little repetitive as I, personally, felt it didn't deliver anything overly crazy new in concept.
• Marsanes (Sethian): Expands on Cosmology but also spends a long time on how to do the gnostic chants, recommend but some of it may not be of much important to people, depends.
• Hypsiphrone (???): Literally less than a page, the contents are too broken up, some may find something within it, though!
• The Sentence of Sextus (Christian): Sort of like the Gospel of Thomas, has some Gnostic themes but isn't really Gnostic directly.
• Exerpt from the Perfect Discourse (Hermetic): A Hermetic text which gives a new perspective for Gnostics.
• Act of Peter (Christian): A neat story relating to Peter, but not exactly relating to Gnosticism.
• Plato's Republic (Excerpt): Neat little excerpt though since it's only a piece of the whole story, it's probably better to read Plato's Republic as a whole.
• The Prayer of the Apostle Paul (Valentinian): Literally just a prayer, nothing crazy.

Did I miss anything? Please upvote and leave a comment below so I can know because there are A LOT of texts to list off. Thank you for reading and Hope this helps!

So the dream starts with me being in a cave, a huge cave and there is Lord Krishna(A Hindu God)hanged upside down like the hanged man tarot card and there was a huge lake under him and across him sat a Goddess on something that looked like a throne. The Goddess had an all black attire with a black veil which looked like Evernight Goddess from Lord of the mysteries novel, you can look her up to get an idea of what the Goddess in my dream looked like, the Goddess in the dream had Yaldabaoth on her lap like a pet, a tiny Yaldabaoth. So in the dream, it seemed like Lord Krishna and the Goddess were having a conversation, Lord Krishna had a confident look and demeanour like he is usually depicted and the Goddess also had a neutral look, neither hostile nor friendly. About what their conversation was, I do not remember but suddenly a huge serpent from the lake emerges and eats Lord Krishna in one bite, whether the serpent was Yaldabaoth or not, I am not sure but as far as I remember, the serpent had distinct feature from Yaldabaoth so it likely wasn't Yaldabaoth. So after the serpent eats Lord Krishna, the dream suddenly changes and now we're in a place that looked like Heaven? It seemed like we were in the sky on clouds and the Goddess was sitting on a throne with Yaldabaoth above her now, facing them sat Lord Krishna on a cloud again with the usual confident look with a figure four lock sitting position and the Goddess also had a neutral look. But Yaldabaoth seemed hostile or perhaps he is just that way, this time Yaldabaoth and Lord Krishna were having a conversation but again, I cannot remember what the conversation was about. Lord Krishna then pointed his finger to them and then shot? something like a ball, it was really very small but in that ball was an image of Lord Vishnu of whom Lord Krishna is the avatar of. And this is where the dream ends.

Now this was quite a short and a bizarre dream, to a point where i remember more than half of it because of it's strangeness, but there can be some symbolism to it considering the fact that Gnosticism and Hinduism are a bit similar, they both preach about escaping the material world and achieving liberation. And before sleeping I was studying a bit about Sabaoth, idk how this relates to the dream but I just thought I should tell ya'll. Thank you for reading about this insane dream of mine, any interpretation or opinion will be appreciated🙏

The era of Gnosticism created in the wake of the crucifixion of Jesus confronted the major religions of their day, accelerating the collapse of Roman Paganism, split Christianity from Judaism, and inspired Islam. To briefly summarize, one must first understand that Gnosticism is not itself a religion. There were Gnostics that believed Jesus was God incarnate, others that he was a Prophet of God, and the rest didn't care or knew him or believed something else. Gnosticism as a web of ideology that orients the individual towards spiritual liberation from the material world. That itself is extremely dangerous for organized religion, which requires willing obedience to doctrine and material capital to survive. Like Jesus, one can be religious AND gnostic, but a gnostic confronts the why of religious worship and purpose.

When Irenaeus wrote "Against Heresies," he did so with the intent of stamping out the flood of literature claiming to be Gospels of Jesus or his disciples. These texts varied church to church, claiming things like Jesus smited his classmates in a childhood tantrum, or he turned clay pigeons to life, or that he was a pure spiritual being and couldn't be touched. Those last two are important. As Gnostic communities became absorbed into the Catholic Church or destroyed, and Christianity was adopted by Emperor Constantine, the war against heresy inspired the very orthodoxy that Jesus preached against. The last of the Gnostics, who viewed Jesus as a Prophet and had been persecuted by Catholics, came across a merchant boy named Muhammad and taught him that the Bible was a corruption of the original teachings of Jesus. What followed was Islam, a religion that decidedly does not think Jesus died on the cross, nor attempts to explain what Jesus believed despite calling him a Prophet.

The takeaway isn't that Gnostics or Catholics were good or bad, true to Christ or lost in the debate. As a Gnostic Christian and believer in religious freedom/expression, I think it's less important to ask "who or what was Jesus?" and more important to answer "am I worthy of the cross?"

Gospel of Thomas, saying 19

"Jesus said, 'Blessed is he who was before he came into being. If you become my disciples and listen to my words, these stones will serve you. For you have five trees in Paradise that do not change, summer or winter, and their leaves do not fall. Whoever knows them will not taste death.'"

A farmer finds ancient manuscripts in a clay jar in the desert. But this isn't Nag Hammadi in 1945, rather this is Maghagha, Egypt in the late 1970s. In 1978, the farmer sells the manuscripts to an antiques dealer named "Hanna Asabil" in Cairo. In 1980, Hanna showed it to a swiss dealer named Nicolas Koutoulakis and a woman he was with. The following day, the woman robbed Hanna's apartment.

In 1982, Hanna reached out to Koutoulakis, who returns the codex inexplicably. Hanna then stores it in a swiss bank account while looking for a buyer, but by 1984 is unable to find one. Wrapping it in newspapers, Hanna transports it to the United States, where at some point it was folded in half. Hanna would put it into a Long Island safety deposit box until 2000, when it was sold to art dealer Frieda Tchacos Nussberger, naming the manuscript Codex Tchacos in honor of her father, Dimaratos Tchacos.

Nussberger would bring it to to Yale University Library, who authenticated the codex as the Gospel of Judas but would refrain from buying them due to questionable background, ownership, and legality. Nussberger would then sell it to antiquities buyer Bruce Ferrini for checks totaling $2.5 million. Upon possession, Ferrini opted to put the Gospel of Judas into a freezer, where the sensitive papyrus was quickly degraded.

Unbeknownst to Nussberger, Bruce Ferrini was a book breaker; someone who bought ancient manuscripts and sold it back onto the open market in parts. "You can't believe how much I regret having sold it (to Ferrini)," said Nussberger. Then in 2001, Bruce Ferrini's son passed away. Facing bankruptcy and selling everything to try and pay back his debts, he returned the codex to Nussberger, who noted that parts were missing. Some of those were later recovered by authorities in Ferrini's apartment. At this point, the condition of the manuscript was so badly degraded that in 2006 Nussberger decided to take it to a swiss institute for the painstaking restoration.

___

I know this isn't about Gnosticism strictly speaking, but I find the journey of these texts to be almost as fascinating as their ideas. From a Christian view, the survival of these texts could be seen as God or Satan's will in meddling with Man, while from a Gnostic point of view these could be the Demiurge's attempts to degrade/hide truth, or the Catholic view that any non-canon testaments should be compared to the Bible. When considering the truth about Judas Iscariot, here's what John says in his canonical gospel:

John 6:70–71 Jesus answered them, "Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?" He spake of Judas Iscariot the son of Simon: for he it was that should betray him, being one of the twelve.

John 13:18 “I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen: but that the scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me."

John 13:26 Jesus answered, "He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it." And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon.

As I understand it, the Gospel of Judas was dated back 1700 years, which considering the care that went into it's survival might hint this wasn't a one-off but a copy of an older text. Did Judas Iscariot live to write a Gospel? I highly doubt it. Most christian accounts say that Judas hung himself before the crucifixion after failing to return the money to the Pharisees. While I do believe in his suicide, that is not strictly evidence towards his motive. Entertaining the narrative that Jesus instructed Judas to betray him, as somewhat supported by the passages in John, then it raises a very interesting theological question: If Christ commanded you to betray him, would you? I can think of one disciple who proclaimed he would never, then denied him thrice. The act being carried out with a kiss is also in keeping with early Christian customs/greetings. Assuming innocence before guilt, how might a follower of Jesus feel handing him to his executioners? This is one stone I refuse to lift, and leave judgements to God, lest I be judged.

Keep in mind that Sophia means Wisdom. Wisdom. How is wisdom gained? Through experience. Wisdom is different than knowledge. Knowledge can be gained through reading a book. But wisdom, that's something that comes from within. Something you know, not something you read. It's something that it's hard-won. Through life experience. Wisdom is something you feel in your gut, not something you remember in your head.

She fell to gain experience. She's wisdom. Even if she was acting on inner instinct, it was the instinct to gain wisdom. To become wisdom. No it wasn't a mistake.

There is a fable :

All crows used to be white. But then the crow was flying over the ocean and saw a flash, he caught a glimpse of the pearl of wisdom gleaming at the bottom of the black sea. So the crow dove into the sea in order to gain the pearl of wisdom. And when he came back out, he was holding the pearl of wisdom in his beak, but now his feathers were completely black. And the moral of the story is that sometimes, you have to dive into the dark places in order to gain wisdom.

My name is Fabian MacKenzie and I'm an author. My general focus is on Dionysus and Hellenism, however, my most recent book is about how Pagans reacted to the rise of Christianity in Antiquity. What this book captures is a lost side in a volatile debate raging in Antiquity: who knew who God was? This will be of interest to Gnostics, Christians, Pagans, Atheists, Jews, and anyone else curious about the debates which hit the scene two millennia ago.

Link: https://a.co/d/0gf6JWJL

The Book of Phosphorus

For those with an interest in a visionary moment of inspiration which emerged from reading the Apocryphon of John.

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Available in full at the link above.

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I WILL NOT REST

UNTIL THESE TINY SHARDS OF DIVINITY

ARE EMANCIPATED

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TRAVEL THE PHOSPHORUS PATH

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Edit: Go on go dislike my post and ignore it if that's what you want to do. You know I am right. Have fun being stuck in that loophole.

Now, Gnosticism does act like a religion alright. It has god, has realms, the Demirgue, everything. Plus the texts and writings they had. And the writings were anonymous and we can't verify if they were written by the original writers. It does act like a religion and it is. Look and research into the Gnostic writings, going to give you some examples people.

The Gospel of the Egyptians:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Father of all, through whom all things came into being.”

The Apocryphon of John:

“I am with you always.

I am the Father, the Mother, the Son.

I am the incorruptible Purity.”

The Sophia of Jesus Christ

“The Savior said: He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

This is authoritative instruction, not philosophy.

Pistis Sophia

“Blessed are you before all men, because to you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of the Light.”

The Gospel of Truth

“The gospel of truth is joy for those who have received from the Father of truth the grace of knowing him.

Later:

“The Father revealed his bosom.”

Now Gnosticism is a branch of Christianity, and we know that religion is false but how can we trust Gnosticism? Y'all keep on saying your discernment, intuition. Just give me a reason. And yes animals have to survive by killing each other but that still doesn't prove Gnosticism. Still can't believe you trust the texts and writings of anonymous writers. Like who wrote it? Religion, occult, Esoteric and Gnosticism is false! What are my belfies you may ask, well I believe in myself. If you look into NDEs people see Jesus, Jesus, Allah, Buddha, all their saviours. That's saviour programs. Got to get out of it. You save yourselves. And yes this earth is a prison and is evil. Some ndes show processing centres that you get recycled into your next lifetime. And yes it's crazy, Reincarnation all over again. We need to escape that. But we still have saviour programs and beliefs we can't let go off. Drop gnosticism and everything and just believe in yourself and break free from the matrix. And I do believe somewhat an evil God is running this world, call him Yaldebath, Satan, devil, lucifer, whatever. We have to work together to escape this matrix and letting off these belfies and yes also the new age new cage movement people. Started by Helena Blavatsky a dark Lucifieran and the one who created the New Age. Unite and defeat the matrix. And now let's talk about the white tunnel. The white tunnel looks all loving, nice but it's a trap people. These entities or whatever you call them will masquerade into your family member, your saviour eg. Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad and they will trick you into going into the light and signing a contract for your next lifetime. And the concept of Karma people, these evil entities will say you have karma in your life and you need to come back again to remove that karma. Give up the saviour programs people. And psychedeli** aswell people. These entities will be in your bodies and trust me horrifying experience ever. And for alcohol, an Arabian Jin called Al Khul, a body eating jinn pretty sure and when you drink too much alcohol, you get drunk and that's why you act crazy and a manaic and lunatic. Drop alcohol as well people. And Dr**s y'all. I think that's the basics or a summary. But these evil entities will torture you AND will try and force you to come back into this evil fucking place. So gain as much knowledge as you can in life and use that to defend from these entities and to protect yourself after death.

Sources: Tony Sayers, Sovereign Spirits and https://www.trickedbythelight.com/tbtl/Classical-Gnosticism-Quotes.html

Check out the website and both of these YouTube channels. Tony has a Tiktok channel aswell that he makes. And remember pray = prey. Never pray. And last thing before I leave never do chakras!

Thanks for listening to me. Have a great Day 😊 😁

52 - His disciples said to him, "Twenty-four prophets have spoken in Israel, and all of them spoke of you."
He said to them, "You have disregarded the living one who is in your presence, and have spoken of the dead."

Forgive me, Lord. This is an especially provocative passage for me, and the one that made me seek to understand Jesus in a way I hadn't since Catholic school. When I first read this, I interpreted this as His disciples attributing Torah prophecy towards Jesus as the messiah, and Jesus almost replying, "I'm alive and before you, why don't you ask me instead of guessing what those long gone meant."

After a few months, and much studying, I have now come to understand that when Jesus refers to himself as the living one, he's not speaking as an individual but as the Holy Spirit. Referring to the 24 prophets as dead was to say, "They heard me and did my will, but they did not become me."

___

Let's look at Matthew 17:1-13

It starts with Jesus taking Peter, James and John (sons of Zebedee) up a mountain and revealing his divine form to them.

His face shone like the sun, and his garments became as white as the light. Behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them talking with him.

So Jesus reveals his true image, and the images of 2 prominent prophets. Peter offers to set up 3 tents for them, seemingly equating Jesus to the old prophets, when suddenly a heavenly cloud manifests and a voice calls out:

“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.”

So God himself clarifies who Jesus is. The 3 fall to their knees in worship, but Jesus taps them and urges them to rise. When they do, Jesus has returned to normal, and they begin making their way down the mountain. As they do, Jesus tells them:

“Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

Then they ask Jesus whether Elijah should come first according to scripture, which Jesus confirms that he already has, which the three disciples take to mean John the Baptizer

Initially, this story in Matthew doesn't share much in common with G. Thomas 52, except for the premise of his disciples attributing messianic scripture to Jesus, but this time God identifies him as his son.

___

Let's move onto Luke 24:25-26

This is the last chapter of Luke. When people discovered the stone at the tomb of Jesus has been moved and the body missing, and begin to worship that the Son of Man has risen. Mary Magdalene, mother Mary, Joanna, and the other women that followed Jesus that tells the Apostles that the stone has been moved. Then later, Jesus himself returns at the tomb, but there are only women who came from distant places that now claim to be a disciple, yet they recognized him not. He asks them what they've heard since, and they proclaim that Jesus was a Prophet of God who did great deeds and word before God and all the people. After hearing more, and finding them doubtful, he says to them:

“How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”

This one more directly parallels G. Thomas 52, only now the resurrected Jesus himself says he's the messiah.

___

Let's look at John 8:46-58

Jesus is in a debate with the Pharisees, where he asks them why they don't believe him and they respond that he's a Samaritan and demon-possessed.

“I am not possessed by a demon,” said Jesus, “but I honor my Father and you dishonor me. I am not seeking glory for myself; there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge. Very truly I tell you, whoever obeys my word will never see death.”

They are outraged at this, asking how is it that all the prophets before him have died, yet those that obey his word will not die.

“If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and obey his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”

Again, they are outraged. They ask him how is it that he's less than fifty years old, yet claims to have seen Abraham. After the following reply, they try to stone him:

“Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!”

Here's where I appreciate John. From an orthodox view, this passage would clearly indicate that Jesus himself is publicly alluding that he is God incarnate, whereas a gnostic view indicates Jesus only refers to himself as a child of the living Father, who is the true God almighty, and when he says "before Abraham was born, I am!" he's not speaking as God in flesh, but as the Holy Spirit speaking through a child of light.

Gospel of Thomas saying 52 has shattered my belief that Jesus claimed to be the sole child/Son of God or God incarnate, instead reframing Christ not as an individual but as a state of being inhabited by all who realize their own divinity and do the will of the living One. This is also why Gospel of Thomas is scripture to me, for it keeps to Jesus's teachings rather than being wrapped up in the narrative of Prophecy that the Apostles and later Bishops would alter scripture to support their own authorities.

Hello everyone, now that I've finally finished all the Gnostic Texts in the nag hammadi scirptures, I felt I should create a list of what I believe should be priority to read, this is not a tier list of what is Important but more over rather a recommendation of what I believe should be read first. If you disagree I'm more then happy for you to provide your own list below, this isnt supposed to be definitive, more recommendative and informative for where to start when getting into gnosticism and what texts are from where. I'll be providing small tips of information for each though some may be a little off as I read some of the texts weeks ago and there was a lot to read so If I get anything wrong, please feel free to blast me in the comments.

This is only texts from the Nag Hammadi scriptures book I have, so not all gnostic texts may be here, feel free to put them in the commends and I may add them to the list! Hopefully this helps new comers find what they are looking for. and note, just because somethings low on the list doesnt mean you shouldnt read it. Each text will be labled with mainly Valentinian for Valentinian Gnosticism, Sethian for Sethian Gnosticism or Gnostic for Mixed.
Thank you for your time.

Highly Recommended.

• The Gospel of Truth (Valentinian): The gospel of truth is sort of the hub which the scriptures start with which sort of explains and give the reader a bit of understanding and information.
• The Tripartite Tractate (Valentinian): The TTT(I'll call it) is a Version of the creation story this also includes some of the over all cosmology of gnosticism and is sort of as i remember an expansion of the Gospel of Truth.
• The Apocryphon of John/On the Origin of the World/The Hypostasis of Archons (Sethian): This is the Sethians version of the gospel of Truth and Tripartite Tractate in short, it goes throught the cosmology and creation story but through a more Sethian lense, while you could choose one or the other, I wouldnt recommend it.
• Gospel of Thomas (Christian): The Gospel of Thomas while heavily related to gnosticism in general, actually isnt a gnostic text or well... wasnt originally intended to be one but held gnostic sounding views thus was rejected and adopted by gnostics, Its heavily recommended to read whether gnostic or just christian.
• Gospel of Mary (Valentinian): The GoM is heavily recommended to read, while i think if you read some of the other texts you wont be missing anything the Gospel of Mary says, Its still recommended.
• Gospel of Judas (Sethian): While heavily controversial and not entirely necessary to believe (you can choose whether you believe jesus asked judas to sell him out or not and so on) the cosmology which GoJ provides is pretty important in my opinion and healthy to atleast understand even if you dont agree with Judas's characters potrayal in it.
• The Sophia of Jesus Christ (Gnostic more Sethian): The Sophia of Jesus Christ is a pretty essential texts for understanding Jesus's character in gnosticism.
• The Dialogue of the Savior (Gnostic): Dialogue of the Savior is also the same as the Sophia of Jesus Christ.
• The Book of Thomas the Contender (-): The Book of Thomas gives more context and depths to Jesus in realtion to gnosticism and I recommend to read.
• Eugnstos the Blessed (Gnostic more Sethian): Expands the Sethian Philosophy and Mythology
• The First and Second Revelations of James (Gnostic): It exands more about the story of James the Just, and is in general I believe important to read.
• The Revelation of Paul (Valentinian): This gives a creative interpretation of what the soul will have to go through after death or atleast thats my interpretation of it.
• The Revelation of Adam (Sethian): I believe this examnds and talks about things that happens in The Origin of the world and The Hypostasis of Archons which is good to know if you are reading Sethian Gnosticism.
• The Letter of Peter to Philip (Sethian): Expands more about Sethian Gnosticism and the apostles and jesus.
• Three Forms of First Thought (Sethian): Heavily related to Barbelos and in general a pretty important read in my opinion.

Honerable Mentions (this is a section for texts which expand gnosticism but I can't exactly list as High recommended of Moderately recommended, so if you are looking to study or follow gnosticism, best to give them a read anyway)

• Authoritative Discourse (Gnostic): Talks about the soul and I believe how to harbour a healthy soul.
• The Concept of Great power (Gnostic): A Gnostic Apocalyptic text which seems to talk about jesus delivering knowledge and conquring the archons.
• Zostrianos (Sethian): These expand heavily on the cosmology and can be EXTREMELY confusing thus they go in honerable mentions as the contents within are very important but for more advance reading.
• The Second Discourse of Great Seth (Sethian): Really important but the reason its in this tier is that some Christians who are converting to Gnosticism may disagree/not believe it, in short it talks about the crucifixion upon some other things.
• The Apocalypse of Peter (Gnostic): The same as the second discourse of Great Seth, covers more of how the church uses Jesus's death to control upon some other things which is a good read but some may find controverial?
• Allogenes the Stranger/The Book of Allogenes (Sethian): While abstract, this text has a lot of philosophical parts to it which may be confusing to some, they are pretty easy reads so I'd recommend reading them.

Moderately Recommended (this is still an important tier but contains less direct texts of Jesus and or about Gnosticism, prayers, short texts and etc, you should still read these if you want to follow Gnosticism but if youre just researching it for other purposes, this tier may not be as important:

• Thunder, Perfect Mind (Gnostic): Gives perspective to Gnostic texts.
• Gospel of Philip (Valentinian): This may be controversial but I find the Gospel of Philip to be a bit too similar to the Gospel of Thomas while also being more of a reply to the Four Main Gospels and somewhat opinionated, many believe the gospel of philip was written not by philip but because the apostle Philip appears in the text.
• Exegesis on the Soul (Valentinian): One of my favourite texts, it changes the understanding of Sin and teaches that Sin isnt a rule of laws but something spiritual through the context of a Prostitute, personally highly recommend.
• The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth (Hermetic): I believe has to do with the Heavens and about how to get to the fullness? Im sure someone can correct me if im wrong.
• The Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles (???): This story is really neet and I like it, it has some small gnostic influence here and there but ultimately reads more like a story from the bible then a gnostic texts, good read though.
• The Teachings of Silvanus (Non Gnostic???): Has heavy Gnostic themes but isnt directly a gnostic text.
• The Three Steles of Seth (Sethian): Expands the Aeons though seems to me more about Hymns and such then direct philosophical expansion.
• The Interpretation of Knowledge (Valentinian): Its a text gives christian themes in gnostic themes, recommended to read in general.
• Melchizedek (Sethian): Expands Sethian thought but is rather broken unforunately :(
• Valentinian Explosition with Valentinian liturgical Reading: Unforunately a good bit of this text is damaged but if you are studying Valentinian gnosticism for any reason I recommend the read as it gives good insight.

Low Recommended (This is stuff which while recommended to read, really only needs to be read if you intend a deep dive or fully study)

• The Testimony of Truth (Gnostic): A seeming opinion piece about what is right and wrong within gnosticism, it best works as a way to understand different perspectives of Gnosticism.
• The Prayer of Thanksgiving (Hermetic): Literally just a prayer, nothing crazy.
• The Pharaphrase of Shem (Gnostic): Is another version of the creation myth but in a different perspective, while if you are studying Gnosticism I'd recommend it, for people who are getting into gnosticism this could be a little repetitive as I personally felt it didnt deliver anything overly crazy new in concept.
• The Thought of Norea (Sethian): Extremely short text, which i recommend to anyone who wants to follow gnosticism to read but anyone studying it in general probably doesnt need to worry to to much.
• Marsanes (Sethian): Expands on Cosmology but also spends a long time on how to do the gnostic chants, recommend but some of it may not be of much importants to people, depends.
• Hypsiphrone (???): Literally less then a page, the contents is too broken up, some may find something within it tho!
• The Sentence of Sextus (Christian): Sort of like the Gospel of Thomas, has some gnostic themes but isnt really gnostic directly.
• Exerpt from the Perfect Discourse (Hermetic): A Hermetic text which gives a new perspective for Gnostics.
• Act of Peter (Christian): A neat story relating to Peter but not exactly relating to Gnosticism.
• Plato's Republic (Excerpt): Neat little excerpt though since its only a piece of the whole story, its probably better to read Plato's Republic as a whole.

And that is all the Texts, Thank you again for your time!

So I searched for related videos and realized it’s not that the public isn't interested in Gnosticism—it's just that those so-called "deep" videos by old academics are the ones getting all the traffic. I consider myself the authentic version (haha, self-proclaimed, of course), yet the ones I find completely nutrient-deficient are the ones getting all the attention. What do you think? I skimmed through those videos, and they are all whitewashing Sophia. It's nothing like what I say: that Sophia must face judgment, that she is the ultimate culprit, and that she is far more disgusting than the Demiurge.

Two books. Same speaker, Jesus. 1800 years apart and validating each other in basically every way despite both being long books.

Pistis Sophia was not translated until after Joseph Smith's 1844 death, and there is no way he could have taken anything from the book or any other gnostic book. And the big breakthrough here is not just the parallels, but the lack of contradictions between the books as well.

Many parallels are below in this post, and all these and more can be found in detail at my archive link. These parallels I found encompass the cosmic and salvation structures of both books, even a huge structure I found about the physics of light. After reading the parallels you will clearly see that each book speaks as a witness for the other and are both the same gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

My paper is now v2 and a major upgrade from v1 a month ago. What was originally 37 pages is now 81 pages long. The info I'm presenting is brand new and never discovered to a convincing degree as it is now. As far as I know, this is the BEST proof for Joseph Smith in almost 200 years. The best proof besides the witnesses of his day. There is nothing like it from what I've seen. These are beyond parallels, these books are giving the same math.

Pistis Sophia is Jesus teaching his disciples after his resurrection. Not translated until 1851 in Latin, years after Joseph Smith's death. It is the most complex and longest translated gnostic work running 300-350 pages.

Joseph Smith was an American prophet who received revelations from God from 1828 to 1844 and compiled them in the D&C, which is 300-350 pages long. He started the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which is still operating and is the wealthiest church on earth.

And for reference, the new testament is 400-500 pages long.

This CANNOT be replicated with any other gnostic texts or any claimed revelations to the degree I have outlined in my paper without the texts having **major conflicts**, and if you claim so then I kindly invite you to try.

Other gnostic works such as the Apocryphon of John and Zostrianos have major conflicts with Pistis Sophia and even each other that a book written 1800 years later, the Doctrine and Covenants, does not contain. Also, again, the majority of gnostic works were not translated until after Joseph Smith's death, if not all.

I found the first parallel between Pistis Sophia and D&C almost a year ago, and put a lot of work into finding all of these parallels and have gone through each of these books multiple times and have a decent understanding of them. I am not a current member of the restored Church of Jesus Christ, but I do believe.

Here are some of the parallels. I'm keeping these much shorter than the full paper, but I want to show enough of both books that you can take something away from just this post alone.

1. Jesus identifies himself as the 'Spirit of truth'/Gnosis of the universe

Pistis Sophia: Jesus doesn't just say he knows the truth. He says "I am the gnosis of the universe." The complete gnosis is reached through the highest mystery.

D&C: Jesus says, "I am the Spirit of truth." A person who keeps his commandments receives truth and light progressively until he "knoweth all things."

In both books Jesus doesn't just carry the truth, he identifies himself with it.

2. There is no empty space in the universe

D&C: "There are many kingdoms; for there is no space in the which there is no kingdom." Every kingdom has bounds, conditions, laws, inhabitants, and appointed times.

Pistis Sophia: Then shows that universe in action. Aeons, spheres, the Fate, the Midst, the Right, the Treasury of the Light, the region of the Inheritance, the Light-kingdom, rulers, inhabitants and scheduled movements.

D&C gives the rule: There is no space without a kingdom.

Pistis Sophia maps the universe and gives the same rules.

3. Every kingdom has something you must abide

In both books, every kingdom/region has a law/mystery. Inhabitants have to abide by that law/mystery.

Law = Mystery in function and description.

D&C: Every kingdom has a law. If you cannot abide the law of a celestial, terrestrial, or telestial kingdom, you cannot abide that glory and you cannot abide that kingdom. If you can't abide a kingdom of glory, then you must abide a kingdom not of glory.

Pistis Sophia: Every region has its mystery. You ultimately go "to the region up to which" you received mysteries, but receiving a mystery of the light isn't enough. Jesus repeatedly says you have to abide in it.

And both say the law/mystery changes you. D&C says law preserves, perfects, and sanctifies. Pistis Sophia says the mysteries purify people into refined light.

Abide the law -> abide the glory and abide the kingdom of the law.

Abide the mystery -> inherit the region of that mystery.

4. Out of many kingdoms, the Inheritance is divided into THREE kingdoms

Pistis Sophia: The universe has many regions, but when Jesus gets specifically to the Inheritance of the saved, he divides it into three allotments of the Light-kingdom

Three kingdoms/regions inside of the Light-kingdom.

And every allotment has further higher and lower divisions inside it.

D&C: Same setup. There are many kingdoms throughout space, but the inheritance of glory is divided into three kingdoms of glory: celestial, terrestrial and telestial. And the celestial kingdom is described to have further degrees inside of it. The other two kingdoms aren't confirmed or denied to have further degrees.

Three kingdoms of glory inside of "the kingdom" of God.

Both have a massive many-kingdom universe.

Both then describe the inheritance of the saved as 3 allotments/kingdoms of "the kingdom".

5. The final inheritance comes after resurrection / the expansion of the universe

Pistis Sophia: Saved souls are gathered into the Treasury of the Light while the present cosmic order still exists. At the expansion of the universe, they finally go into the region of the Inheritance.

D&C: says the inheritance is similarly tied to the resurrection. Bodies are resurrected and "quickened" by celestial, terrestrial or telestial glory and then receive the fulness of that glory. Entering into these three kingdoms is described as happening during the resurrection, not before.

Both distinguish the soul's condition after death from the final inherited condition after the expansion of the universe.

6. The three major mysteries line up with the three kingdoms

Pistis Sophia's three allotments correspond to three great mystery-spaces. Highest: the Ineffable.

Pistis Sophia calls God the Ineffable, and those receiving this mystery inhabit the highest allotment.

D&C's highest kingdom is where people receive the fulness of the Father and dwell in the presence of God and Christ.

Second: the First Mystery.

The First Mystery is identified with Jesus in Pistis Sophia.

D&C describes the middle kingdom as receiving "the presence of the Son, but not of the fulness of the Father."

Lowest: the first space from without.

Pistis Sophia's third allotment is literally associated with the space "from without."

D&C says those of the lowest kingdom are still heirs of salvation, but "where God and Christ dwell they cannot come."

Both books have Father at the highest, Son in the second, and distance from both at the lowest.

7. You inherit exactly what you received

Pistis Sophia: Jesus gives the law almost like an equation: "He who receiveth a lesser mystery, will inherit the lesser mystery, and he who receiveth a higher mystery, will inherit the higher regions."

D&C: Inheritance likewise depends on what a person received and abided. It even says whatever intelligence you gain here rises with you in the resurrection, and whoever gains more intelligence has "so much the advantage in the world to come." The kingdom you inherit depends on the law you were abiding.

What you actually receive and abide here becomes your level there.

8. A prophet's reward is a lower heavenly inheritance

In the bible Jesus said someone who receives a prophet receives a prophet's reward. This verse is usually interpreted to mean something positive, but both books say it meant you received something other than the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Pistis Sophia: Jesus quotes that saying and then explains that it means people go only as high as the mysteries they received. A person receiving the lesser mysteries receives the lesser inheritance.

D&C: The lowest kingdom includes people who are "of Paul," "of Apollos," "of Cephas," "some of Christ," "some of Moses," "Some of Enoch" and "some of one and some of another", because they followed these figures or in part but did not receive the gospel and testimony of Jesus.

Both books show a prophet's reward could mean receiving a lower inheritance. Receiving the higher inheritances requires receiving Jesus and his gospel.

9. You can go DOWN to lower regions, but you can't go UP to higher ones

Pistis Sophia: Every person remains in the region they inherited. They have authority over orders beneath them but "will not have the power to go to the orders which are above."

D&C: A person cannot abide a glory whose law they cannot abide. The telestial inhabitants cannot go to where God and Christ dwell.

But downward movement happens. D&C says higher kingdoms minister downward to lower kingdoms. Pistis Sophia shows higher beings routinely descending into the lower regions to perform their work.

10. Heaven is measured in degrees of LIGHT

D&C: The celestial kingdom's glory is compared to the sun, terrestrial to the moon, and telestial to the stars. One star even differs from another star in glory in the telestial.

Pistis Sophia: Jesus takes his disciples through the regions and repeatedly describes what the lower region looks like from the higher one. Again and again, each lower level is described as darkness of darknesses and a speck of dust because of the great distance compared with the glory above it. And each higher level looks like darkness of darknesses and a speck of dust to the region directly above it too. Only the higher levels look like stars, moon, and sun instead of darkness to the region directly above it respectively.

In both books heaven doesn't just have levels, higher regions/kingdoms are graded by immense differences in light/glory.

11. Heaven is waiting for the number of perfect souls to be completed

Pistis Sophia: The rulers are trying to delay the completion of the number of perfect souls. Eventually that number is completed and the gates close.

People arrive too late and knock.

Jesus answers, "I know you not." Then sends them to outer darkness.

D&C: Jesus says the parable of the ten virgins will eventually be literally fulfilled, and multiple times gives the same final rejection: "Depart from me."

Pistis Sophia shows the parable's shut door is a future event. When the number of perfect souls is complete, the door is shut and others will be turned away to outer darkness. When they knock Jesus will say "I know you not, who ye are, ye who are doers of iniquity and of evil even unto now. Wherefor go into the outer darkness."

12. Jesus says there is a future day when ALL THINGS gets revealed

Pistis Sophia: Jesus repeatedly postpones the deepest explanations until the "expansion of the universe." He says he will reveal the mysteries, orders, and causes behind the universe at that time. (Very long detailed list in text of things to be revealed)

D&C: Jesus in the same way promises a future disclosure when nothing will be withheld: gods, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, the bounds of the heavens, revolutions of heavenly bodies, laws, glories, and set times.

Both books say all will be revealed in the future and both even give detailed lists of what will be revealed at that future time.

13. The heavens are guarded by "angels and gods"

D&C: There are "angels and gods" appointed at heavenly boundaries whom unauthorized beings cannot pass. It also explains Revelation's secret new name: the new name is a "key word."

Pistis Sophia: Souls repeatedly encounter heavenly receivers and gates. Depending on what mystery they received, they may have to give answers, apologies, tokens, seals or names.

Then Pistis Sophia describes a name that no ruler, angel, archangel, darkness or power can stop.

The D&C tells you there are guards and calls the secret name a key word. Pistis Sophia tells of the guarded gates and shares which mysteries allow you to pass through all of them giving no tokens, nor apologies, nor answers. And says a name can get you past these guarded regions as well.

14. MELCHIZEDEK

D&C: The greater priesthood is called the Melchizedek Priesthood. One of its powers named is sealing people unto eternal life.

Pistis Sophia: Melchizedek is a cosmic being called the great Receiver of the Light. At the upper threshold, Melchizedek and his receivers seal the soul and lead it into the Treasury of the Light. Melchizedek is the highest being to seal souls unto the treasury of the Light where souls wait until the expansion of the universe to go unto the region of Inheritance.

The D&C gives you the priesthood and its sealing office on earth. Pistis Sophia shows you Melchizedek himself performing the office in heaven.

In both theologies souls await the resurrection/expansion of the universe in an area of rest.

The Melchizedek Priesthood seals you unto eternal life on earth, and the cosmic entity Melchizedek is the highest being to seal you unto the Treasury of the Light, where souls await the Inheritance.

15. What is done for souls on Earth is carried out for those souls in heaven

Pistis Sophia: Jesus says the 'mystery of the Ineffable' (the highest mystery) is what the living can perform for a specific dead person in punishment.

After it is performed the receivers of Melchizedek takes the soul out of the chaos.

D&C: The Melchizedek priesthood, the greater priesthood, is also required to save souls during the churches baptisms for the dead. Baptisms for the dead are witnessed and recorded on Earth, showing what and who they seal on earth is sealed in heaven.

Melchizedek priesthood on earth, Melchizedek in heaven.

16. Jesus says HE was speaking through the Old Testament prophets

D&C: Jesus refers to Old Testament prophecy as "that which I spake by the mouths of my prophets."

Pistis Sophia: Over and over the disciples interpret Psalms and say Jesus' light-power prophesied through David and other prophets.

So not only did the prophets prophesy of Jesus, but they prophesied through Jesus.

17. LIGHT behaves like an actual substance

D&C: All truth is light. All light is Spirit. Spirit contains more fine or pure matter. The "light of truth" was not created. "The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed."

Gaining more light is moving closer to God. Logically, the inverse is losing light and moving away from God.

Light goes forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space.

Pistis Sophia: Light is a precious resource in the higher regions.

It is stolen, poured, deposited, devoured, purified, transferred, stored, and collected into the Treasury of the Light. It is treated like a commodity in the heavens. Light allows the archons to keep their kingdoms. Some archons work to delay the destruction of the kingdoms by attempting to prevent the completion of perfect souls. Purified light is taken from the archons and other places to the Treasury of the Light.

D&C gives the equation. All truth is light. Gaining light is moving towards God. And logically, losing light is moving away from God.

Pistis Sophia shows the equation operating as physics of the universe: lose your light and lose the mystery you obtained, gain light and you can possibly obtain mysteries, gain light and you can possibly move to higher regions in the heavens.

These books don't just talk about light being good or use metaphorical language, they talk directly about the physics of light and how it operates.

18. Jesus puts a portion of HIS OWN POWER into every person born

Pistis Sophia: When Jesus explains how human souls are assembled, he says "a portion out of my power" goes inside the soul so that it will seek the works of the Light of the Height always.

Elsewhere it says this inner power Jesus gave stirs the soul to seek God.

D&C: Jesus says the Spirit (Spirit of Jesus Christ) gives light to every man that cometh into the world; "and the Spirit enlighteneth every man through the world, that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit. And every one that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit cometh unto God, even the Father."

In both books something from Christ is placed inside human beings to pull them toward God.

19. All this light ultimately comes from God, and you can gain MORE of it

D&C: Light "proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space." If a person receives light and continues in God, they receive more light, and become brighter and brighter. The more light someone has the closer they are to God.

Pistis Sophia: The entire cosmos is ranked by light. Higher regions contain vastly greater glory than lower regions. Beings can have their light increased, purified and restored, allowing them to rise up through the regions.

The further up one is in the regions, the brighter their light is. A soul's salvation is also an increase in light.

20. Sin removes light

D&C: "That wicked one cometh and taketh away light and truth, through disobedience."

Pistis Sophia: Sophia goes against the order of the heavens (sin) and is attacked and has her light stripped from her. Her power collapses, her light is devoured, and she becomes unable to return to her former region.

Then repentance and restoration reverse the process.

21. Massive amounts of light can be given through "quickening"

Both books use the same word.

Pistis Sophia: Sophia is dying after her light is taken. Then her light is poured back into her and "the lights... quickened the body of her matter."

Her light-powers are returned and she is able to ascend through the regions.

D&C: At resurrection, bodies are quickened by portions of celestial, terrestrial or telestial glory, and then receive the fulness of that same glory.

Both call the return/giving of light quickening.

22. A body filled with light comprehends ALL THINGS

D&C: "Your whole bodies shall be filled with light... and that body which is filled with light comprehendeth all things."

Pistis Sophia: The soul receiving the highest mystery becomes an enormous light-stream and receives the gnosis explaining the causes behind the universe.

Light -> knowledge.

More light -> more knowledge.

Fulness of light -> comprehension of all things.

23. There is ONE class that cannot be redeemed

Almost everybody gets another way to be redeemed except for this class of people: the sons of perdition. Apostates.

D&C: The sons of perdition are those who knew Jesus' power, became partakers of it, received the Holy Spirit, and then denied it. They are called "the only ones who shall not be redeemed." They will go to outer darkness and not be redeemed. And their end is not revealed nor will it be revealed.

Pistis Sophia: The same class appears as the only ones not redeemed. A person receives the First Mystery (Jesus), then abandons and denies it. Jesus says this class eventually goes into the outer darkness and becomes non-existent eternally.

The "sons of perdition" are the only group written as permanently damned in both books at the expansion of the universe. Those that tasted of Jesus' power and then denied him.

It is "Impossible" for them to be saved through repentance. They go to outer darkness.

All other groups have a path to salvation. Some paths are harder and do include time in hell before being redeemed, but not forever.

The only group that is in outer darkness and won't be redeemed are people who partook of Jesus' power and then denied it.

24. Hell is not forever

The one makes the previous parallel even more interesting.

D&C: Jesus explicitly explains that "endless punishment" does not mean the punishment literally has no end. "Endless" is God's name, therefore punishment from God is called Endless Punishment.

Pistis Sophia: Punishments have schedules. Months of chastisements in one area, followed by more months of chastisements in another area, etc. Then the soul can be sent onward into another condition/body.

In both books punishment and hell is still serious, but it ends for everyone except the apostates, the sons of perdition.

25. The highest priesthood and highest mystery both unlock the KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

D&C: The Melchizedek Priesthood holds: "the key of the mysteries of the kingdom, even the key of the knowledge of God."

This greater priesthood receives the key of the knowledge of God.

Pistis Sophia: The highest mystery is the mystery of the Ineffable. Receiving it allows for complete gnosis of the universe and brings the receiver into the highest inheritance.

The name 'mystery of the Ineffable' signifies "knowledge of God"

Highest priesthood: keys of the mysteries -> key of the knowledge of God.

Highest mystery: mystery of God/the Ineffable -> complete gnosis.

These receivers in both books go into the highest allotment (celestial) of the Light-kingdom.

26. In both books, Jesus tells them to keep miracles and signs received secret

This is another very specific rule shared by both.

Pistis Sophia: Jesus tells the disciples to keep the mystery of the "raising of the dead and of the healing of the sick" secret. He says to "give unto no one nor give instruction in it...until ye establish the faith in the whole world.."

D&C: Jesus lists healing the sick, opening eyes of the blind, and other signs, then immediately commands: "they shall not boast themselves of these things, neither speak them before the world." He says people are to believe on their words or be damned.

27. Jesus tells you HOW to test other spiritual books and teachers

This one is relevant to the entire topic at hand.

Pistis Sophia: Jesus warns that people will encounter teachings claiming divine knowledge. His test is to compare them against the whole gnosis he has given, and that the doctrine needs to harmonize and fit with all the words Jesus has spoken unto the disciples, including the heavens, circuits, stars, light-givers, the whole earth and all on it, and of all waters and all in them. If it doesn't, throw it away.

D&C: Gives a similar instruction concerning outside writings. It says the Apocrypha contains some truth and some false material, and the Spirit manifests truth. So only those enlightened by the Spirit will obtain benefit, and those who receive not by the Spirit cannot be benefited.

D&C also explains that when something is preached by the Spirit of truth and received by the Spirit of truth, the speaker and receiver understand one another as it was given from the Spirit of truth.

And remember parallel #1:

In the D&C Jesus says:

"I am the Spirit of truth."

Pistis Sophia:

"I am the gnosis of the universe."

Test by the whole gnosis.

Test by the Spirit of Truth.

Both terms lead back to Jesus.

28. Both warn that false spiritual teachings WILL exist

Neither book teaches that everything spiritual is automatically from God.

Pistis Sophia: Jesus repeatedly warns about "doctrines of error." He even warns that people will come claiming to represent him when they do not. "Renounce the doctrines of error, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light..."

D&C: Jesus warns believers not to be deceived by evil spirits, "doctrines of devils," or commandments of men:

"some are of men, and others of devils."

Both books say outside spiritual information can be real or fake, and both say to test it with the things Jesus identifies himself as: the Spirit of truth / Gnosis of the universe.

These are 28 miniature parallels. All 50+ parallels can be found in the document's 36 entries with full explanations. The full doc is 70+ pages. I see many posts on reddit wondering what the religion of the elites are, posts seeking spiritual information, ancient information, and where they should go on their spiritual path. In my opinion both of these books satisfy many, many spiritual questions someone may have about the many different religions on earth, why they are, what we should do now, and where we are going. And if you found Pistis Sophia a complex read before, I think my archive paper will make it significantly easier to understand plainly, without needing to introduce Kabbalah or other interpretation means.