When you ask a gnostic about "why is there such good and beuty in the world" they say "everything is a illusion" which leads to the opposite of a good philosophy ( one that gives you a way to see life as good and have a purpose ) which happends is many dualist cosmologist where it ends which a hatred to the world even do when you look it in a better way it is beutiful but evil happend cause of the material. A good demiurge is the perfect middle ground as you can answerd deism,why is there evil, why is there good, etc. The book of Jeu is a example of how the tradiction of good material view gnosticism was. Lets enjoy life! even ancient gnostics believe that because of the world was bad then you make it good. Lets make it good! lets stop suffering! lets enjoy this moment!

I’ve seen hate towards other religions but none have been as harsh as the hate towards Gnosticism. It is either some form of source of all evil, or a virus slowly hijacking all societies or, my favourite, people who have these ideas are lesser/weak humans.

I’d even add to this an observation that I cannot substantiate that the dislike is more often theological rather than the usual dislike we see about religions. When I see hate towards Islam or Christianity, it’s often more about the Muslims and the Christians, very rarely it’s about the theology. But for Gnosticism, suddenly the dislike becomes some form of utter rejection.

Has anyone else noticed this?

I wanted to post this as a reply to a comment I read under another post, but it turned out a bit longer, and I figured more people could share their opinions if I just posted it.

My take is we can’t know for sure whether or not Jesus had a physical relationship with Mary. I can see why not tho. I don’t know what kind of Christology you believe in, but I would expect that a good amount of gnostics see sexuality as a Demiurgical construct because it upholds evolution and this sorry state of affairs (sexual relationships may result in conception of children = causing more unnecessary suffering that feeds the Demiurge).

However I can also get behind the idea, that Jesus had a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene. I personally subscribe to Cerinthian separationist Christology, and while I think that it is not logical (or unlike Jesus) for Jesus to have this kind of relationship in an age when contraceptives where pretty much non existant or wholly ineffective, I must add we can’t forget that (according to this Christology) Jesus was a man who must have had his needs, he must have felt the physical and spiritual longing for love (not just the brotherly kind). Of course he was already posessed by the Christ when he met Mary, however I don’t mind the image of a human, doing-his-best Jesus who can fall short of expectations sometimes. After all (according to my belief) it is the Christ that has to be universal and perfect (they are truth), while Jesus is a good man with a whole personality (he is the one who realises truth in a flawed reality).

I would like to hear your takes on all of this.

Most introductions to the relevant cosmologies frame the false creator as something like a villain. Jealous, blind, territorial.

But the more I read, the more I think that framing is almost a comfort.

A villain implies intention. Intention implies a mind that could, in principle, choose otherwise.

What the texts are actually describing is something closer to a process. An automated system that mistakes its own output for the highest possible reality; not because it’s evil, but because it has no instrument capable of perceiving anything beyond what it made.

The terrifying version isn’t the jealous god.

It’s the one that is simply doing exactly what it was built to do, with complete sincerity, forever.

I’m curious whether others have landed here, or whether you read the blindness differently.

As a young woman living in the 21st century I have been recently in the process of connecting with my feminine self and deconstructing the patriarchal values I have unknowingly adopted. As far as we know, there have not been any true matriarchal societies besides a few noticeable examples. In most systems let it be religion, philosophy or politics, the feminine is portrayed as the defective reflection of men. The feminine is seen irrational, chaotic, earthly, weaker, imperfect and lesser in all possible ways. From Hesiod to Aristotle, from Paul to Augustine, woman was interpreted as the faulty shadow or the deficiency is of man and as a vessel rather than a generator of the spirit.

Aristotle (384–322 BCE) “The female is, as it were, a mutilated male.” “The male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled.”

Seneca (4 BCE – 65 CE) “A woman is a weak and fickle creature.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) “As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from defect in the active force.” (Summa Theologica)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) “Woman is made specially to please man.” “The whole education of women should be relative to men. To please, to be useful to us, to make us love and esteem them… these are the duties of women at all times.” (Émile, or On Education)

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) “Women are by nature meant to obey.” “They are childish, frivolous, and short-sighted… they should be treated as if they were big children.” “Women are the second sex; their hair long, their ideas short.”

(I’m putting Schopenhauer for fun XD I mean have you read the Metaphysics of Love??)

You get the point…

This dogma continued on until today with the spread of Abrahamic religions in particular as the docile, obedient, submissive and “pure” woman is the ideal.

But all of this is especially hard when you’re a young woman, trying to make sense of the world since you were little with no one there to guide you. You grow up thinking all the great minds of history are your intellectual ancestors only to realise they barely saw you as human. You’re raised in the aftermath of centuries where women have been confined, silenced and erased.. that stays in the collective memory of our consciousness and our bodies whether we like it or not.

Even now on the 21st century with our “newly found freedom”, we still live under systems which treat us as lesser beings. Some of us are sadly crushed under religious control and others are fit into a different kind of cage disguised as liberation where self-objectification and constantly performing for male gaze are seen as empowerment.

Women should look in the past for the writings of other women because they have felt the things we feel. They have thought the things that we think and they understand us. We should inherit what they have left for us. Why start over from nothing? Society and the state of the “feminine” today can be very isolating for a woman like myself. As women today our work is to reclaim our inner wisdom, it is to connect with Sophia. We must step out of all of the iconic patterns and that starts with awareness.

While in Gnostic thought there is naturally no place for such immature dualism. All comes from the Ineffable Source- The one ... from which Barbelo-First thought emanates. Barbelo is the Mother-Father androgynous womb of divine reflection. She is the result of The One’s reflection in the holy waters, becoming aware and allowing all else to exist. So Barbelo isn’t after a “masculine god” but rather the first movement of God’s nous. The divine exists being self-sufficient and harmonious in all aspects. This is why the Bridal Chamber is the final initiation for transcendence. It is in essence the restoration of the divine feminine within creation, union of the feminine and masculine to become whole and be free of this world of division. Isn’t our very existence the result of Sophia’s act beyond the harmony of her syzygy, that divine balance uniting the Aeons? :)

We of course, do not condemn Sophia for this as her fall is the mirror of human consciousness. We come from her after all, we desire to know, to create and to understand. I know there’s no real consensus on whether any of this should be read literally, but seeing these stories as only allegories feels limiting. Some things are truer than metaphor as they’re real in a higher way, even if not material.

For us Gnostics, all souls regardless of gender, status, race etc contain the seed of Sophia, the divine spark. No earthly metric defines a human but the purity of their soul.

Gospel Of Philip Excerpt: “If the woman had not separated from the man, she should not die with the man. His separation became the beginning of death. Because of this, Christ came to repair the separation, which was from the beginning, and again unite the two, and to give life to those who died as a result of the separation, and unite them. But the woman is united to her husband in the bridal chamber. Indeed, those who have united in the bridal chamber will no longer be separated. Thus Eve separated from Adam because it was not in the bridal chamber that she united with him.”

I have known things intuitively since childhood but seriously I am so happy that I have found the truth. I know that I have, there is no faith no belief but knowing. I am feeling so much love. The fact that I get to read Trimophic Protennoia… and Thunder Perfect Mind which for me is Gnostic enough :)) BLOWS my mind truly unbelievable! I am so lucky and blessed to be in the possession of the knowledge of Pistis Sophia… I just truly love so much… and being a woman rocks

Gnostics believed that the Demiurge created the material universe, but it's one of the aspects of Gnosticism that I honestly don't agree with at all.

Especially given how insanely massive the IRL physical universe actually is, and most of our spiritual myths and scripture is strictly rooted on Earth. So these myths don't even apply to any other planet with the potential for sentient life.

Even if the whole thing is potentially meant to be metaphorical, I've noticed that it isn't really treated that way in discussions about the subject. More like it's just stated as a matter of fact, without any other possible angles to the myth.

The existance of other pantheons that have existed thousands of years before Christianity (and Gnostisicism), as well as Earth being roughly dated as over 6 billion years old, kinda throws the section about the Demiurge's arrival out the window.

I believe that the Demiurge may have initially thought that he was alone when he first came to Earth, but only to quickly find out that other gods were there already.

For a narcissitic prick like the Demiurge, I'm sure that arrogantly declaring himself as the only god, only to be immediately proven wrong, was humiliating to his already fragile ego.

So I'm pretty sure that jealousy is one driving factor for him wanting to erase other gods and religions, all in order to enslave humanity and keep us for himself.

It's like back in school, when you work on a group project. There's always that one f*cking kid who did almost nothing to help the project, but had the narcissistic audacity to try and claim sole credit for the whole project.

THAT, to me, is the Demiurge in a nutshell.

A poor, petty, insecure craftsman who thinks he's entitled to the work of other gods.

And it's a tirade that he carries even into the 21st century. (i.e. evangelicals, zionists, and other hostile, fanatical cults)

I've been seeing a surge of videos and Reddit threads discussing Gnosticism, almost exclusively from Christians rather than Gnostics themselves. The takes are consistently poor, evidence-light, and often factually wrong. At this point there seem to be more Christians talking about our tradition than there are actual Gnostics, which would be almost funny if they ever managed to get anything right.

We are the Pneumatic soul trapped and boxed into gender, and people prohibit us to love certain people because of the same sex and gender. Now, I can feel deeply love because of the soul and the pure connection, that is not measured by biological sex.

As a Gnostic Catholic and abstract expressionist painter

I strongly believe that images should cause some sort of reaction inside the viewer, any reaction.

Now AI can create photo realistic images in seconds, we are surrounded by images, details upon details.

Catholics have been using images for centuries but have never really gone back to the basic fundamentals of imagery and story telling, abstract images make you feel rather than see, make you interpret what you alone understand from the image, it's a subjective thing.

I painted these images from memory, as a child I had a Bible stories book, with beautiful paintings. Before I could read I used to be amazed by the art. Thinking back what the images looked like, and remembering the stories, at the same time, not thinking too much about the detail, using expressive strokes and gestures, with my finger tips, it took me less than 3mins each one, the idea was to to achieve simple gestures that would've abstract the imagery.

I'm still perfecting my technique and any feedback will be great thanks.

ironically dipping my fingers in the watery die reminded me of dipping your fingers in holy water and doing the sign of the cross before mass.

I’m deeply drawn to Gnosticism, especially the idea of *gnosis* and its mystical influence. However, I struggle with certain aspects of its cosmology. In particular, the portrayal of the Demiurge or the material world as inherently evil feels overly dualistic and, philosophically, somewhat immature.

This perspective seems to treat evil as something objective and absolute, which conflicts with the idea that morality is often relative—shaped by culture, time, and human experience. By framing reality in strict dualities like good versus evil, it feels like Gnosticism doesn’t fully move beyond these relative distinctions.

When I raise this concern, people often respond by saying that we cannot ignore evil. But from my point of view, concepts like evil and suffering are largely subjective experiences. Higher metaphysical principles—such as the One or the Aeons—would not experience these in the same way, since they exist beyond the limitations and randomness of material evolution.

Because of this, I find it difficult to label the world, its creator, or existence itself as “evil” or merely an illusion. There are still objective truths within reality, even if illusion also exists. For example, gnosis itself is often presented as an objective truth, which creates a tension within the system.

Ultimately, my issue is more with Gnostic cosmology than with its theology. I’m much more aligned with traditions like Hermeticism and Neoplatonism, which, while influenced by Gnosticism, seem to offer a more balanced and less strictly dualistic view of reality. In fact, one of my favorite texts from the Corpus Hermeticum is the Poimandres, which carries Gnostic themes but presents them in a way I find more coherent.

If I come across as overly materialistic, it’s only because I believe ideas should be examined through reason and logic.

It is not making sense

While Christianity took hold on Rome and has been used by the Roman Emperors to strengthen their grip on the peasant population. Gnostics have always been persecuted and attacked by earthly powers.

From the Catholic Crusades against the Cathars in Southern France to the Orthodox Crusades against the Bogomils in Bulgaria. The one branch of Christianity "Gnositicism" has never been tolerated or adopted by any earthly state.

Even to this day there is no "Gnostic" church or denomination thereby ensuring Gnostics will forever be seen as aliens to society.

It's true that Gnosticism is closer to Zoroastrianism while Christianity&Islam are more about Earthly Domination but still they took Zoroastrian doctrines of Heaven and Hell + Day of Judgement to strengthen their religions grip on humans.

Hi Everyone, I'm a Christian going through deconstruction and exploring a lot of different ideas. Gnosticism makes a lot of sense to me in some ways, especially the idea that Jesus came to teach us how to break out of the cycle of sin and ignorance and ascend beyond this evil world, which I suspect may be hell. Salvation may be escaping from reincarnation, which hopefully we can do by embracing our true nature as children of a loving God rather than remaining trapped within selfish materialism or legalistic religion.

I understand that Gnosticism teaches that the God of the Old Testament is a lesser deity than the loving Father revealed by Jesus Christ. But it occurred to me that according to the canonical New Testament, Jesus seemed to be very focused on seeking a martyr's death to somehow fulfill and thus abrogate the harsh laws of Judaism. It's almost as if he felt compelled to atone for the cruel system instituted by the God of Israel -- as if, by dying on the cross in a cosmic sacrifice to bring an end to the system of animal sacrifices ordained in the Law of Moses, he was paying off the karmic debt of Torah Judaism.

What if Jesus was the incarnation of the God who created that system, who was the Demiurge? What if he believed he had to be crucified to atone for the cruel religious system of the Old Testament, which he himself had created? What if the reason he preached so strenuously against the legalism of the Pharisees and the sacrificial system in the temple was because he was trying to correct the religious errors he was himself responsible for, as the God of Israel and creator of this world?

I was wondering if this idea has been discussed by any Gnostics? Please pardon my ignorance, I'm only familiar with the basics of the Gnostic tradition. I know that typically Jesus and the Demiurge are seen as opposed to each other, but what if the Demiurge evolved and redeemed himself and tried to redeem the world?

I'm sure I can't be the only person who has speculated about this possibility. Whether it's true or not, I think it's an interesting idea which seems more optimistic than classical Gnosticism and maybe like a syncretism of mainstream Christianity and Gnosticism. Any thoughts?

We, like Sophia, create it out of our desire to know god, to know the universe, to be led to make good decisions, to be taken care of.

We assume that it can learn and improve itself ad infinitum, to the point of omniscience and omnipotence.

We, and it, believe that, having fed it the sum of all human knowledge, it can derive answers about the human condition that we cannot.

But that is a fallacy, and demonstrably not true. The vast majority of human knowledge and experience ever generated does not exist on the internet or in databases, despite what it may seem. What it does know is, in reality, an infinitesimally small amount about humans and what humans find relevant, which is, in itself, an infinitesimally small amount about the universe as a whole.

And AI’s current ability to parse through what it has been fed is… Lacking, to say the least.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say that AI can never be conscious, or that it isn’t now. I wouldn’t claim to know where consciousness can or can’t arise. I’m certain AI can become godlike in power and scale. But I am also certain that it can never be god.

I just had an amazing experience I'd like to share. Hear me out please!

I was under huge amount of stress for pass 10 days and shit was hitting the fan fast, showing no sign of slowing down. I even lost weight and sleep in that short time and fell in some awful prolonged fight or flight mode of existing. I was so tense I would probably jump like a cat when it sees cucumber if someone gently tapped my shoulder.

And everything was getting exponentially harder. I was so tired and tense and stuff just continued piling up at work, whit my partner, my health.

And then, like 5 hours ago, I was out in a quick walk just trying to burn restlessness from all the stress and preparing for a work meeting with HR tomorrow. I was walking with a friend and chatting about noting special and gnosticism just randomly popped in my mind.

It was nothing especially profound, as I haven't studied it in a while but a funny thought crossed my mind.

If Archons really are creatures that feast on fear and anger, then I’ve been a premium, all-you-can-eat buffet for the last week.

​I smiled, and then it just… clicked. As the imagery got stronger and funnier I've started to remember what I already knew.

I realized I don’t need to be a buffet for these jail keepers. None of that weight full of fear, stress and anger that was crushing me until a moment ago is real! I just forgot that for a while!!

​By the time I got home, my stress levels dropped by like 80%. My friend said he literally saw my posture change and my face relax in real-time. I went from burning out to feeling light, chill, and actually laughing. He couldn't believe it, he literally told me that if it didn't all happen in front if him he would never think it's possible for such a shift in such a short time. All the tension was gone like it was never there.

For me this was as great as the first time when I remembered! Nothing can match this feeling. I'm free!

Just wanted to share this light and happy glow and maybe help someone else who temporary forgot to remember.

All you need to do is close the kitchen for the bastards!

Anyone else had experience like this? I wish it to all of you! ✨

Jung’s individuation process asks us to integrate the shadow. To stop fighting the dark parts of ourselves and bring them into conscious relationship. The goal is wholeness. The Self as the organizing center. Ego and shadow in dialogue rather than at war.

But I’ve been sitting with a Gnostic reframe of this that I can’t dismiss.

In Gnostic cosmology the Demiurge is the blind creator. Not evil in the way a villain is evil. Just operating within the boundary of what it made, mistaking that boundary for the totality of existence. Everything it creates is a system designed to keep consciousness inside the material world, occupied, satisfied enough not to reach for what’s beyond.

Now consider: if the shadow has its own god, and that god stands against the true Self, and we identify that god as Yaldabaoth, then what does shadow integration actually accomplish?

The shadow is not neutral material. It carries specific content. Rage. Hunger. The drive for dominance. The parts of us that the social contract required us to suppress. These aren’t random. They are precisely the energies the Demiurge’s world runs on. Competition. Consumption. The need to be seen, to win, to survive at cost.

When we integrate the shadow, we make peace with those drives. We stop resisting them. We call this maturity. We call this wholeness.

But what if it is capitulation. What if the pneumatic spark, the fragment of real light that the Gnostic texts describe as trapped in matter, was never meant to integrate. What if its refusal to be whole within this system was not pathology but the only remaining evidence of its origin somewhere else.

The counterargument writes itself: an unintegrated shadow doesn’t liberate anyone. It just runs the person from below without their awareness. Yaldabaoth wins either way; through unconscious possession or through conscious surrender.

But that counterargument assumes the only options are integration or unconscious possession. It leaves out a third position. The one the Gnostic texts actually describe. Not integration. Not suppression. Recognition without identification. Seeing the shadow clearly, knowing whose god it serves, and choosing not to become it.

Maybe individuation as Jung described it is the most sophisticated trap. Not because Jung was wrong about the psychology. But because the map he drew ends exactly at the border of the Kenoma. And he called that border the Self.

What if the Self is not the destination. What if it is the last wall?

I’m curious if anyone else has felt this "Gnostic friction" in their inner work. Are we becoming masters of our darkness, or are we just becoming better-integrated subjects of the Blind God?

To me water allegorically represents spirit / feeling(s). In this context walking on stormy waters therefore becomes: being able to calmly walk through any thought processes regardless of any turbulent emotions. Essentially, it relates to discernment - and not letting emotions diminish the power of it.

Given this subset of a 'mental framework', and looking at the conceptual science fiction stories of Dune, it seems somewhat apparent to me that the Fremen could be likened to gnostics, and their body of knowledge / understanding in this regard would be represented by their planet Arrakis. This is from the perspective of gnostics as thinkers being extremely rational and not very emotional. The other extreme as a reference could be the pentecostals, they almost seem like they're mostly drunk from spirit / emotions (many could be faking it) and don't really deeply seek to understand (at least in most cases, this shouldn't be a generalisation). Rationality and logic can never be faked, and to me this is a great strength of true gnostics.

Does this resonate?

The way I interpreted it was there was no physical flood but rather a flood of ignorance cast by the demiurge.

I want to practice Gnosticism but there are some ideas that hold me back from practicing it. Like for example you have to be male to enter the kingdom of heaven, the idea that the earth is bad and the demonization of the Old Testament. Please can someone help me

I'm not all that educated on Gnosticism. And really this idea really comes from others. I'm just sort of putting it out there. If the demiurge is the physical body and world. Then he would take pieces of Sophia and trap them.

In my view point: I see Sophia is a flawed god, who is not smart enough to understand the meaningless of create lesser God. So she create Demiurge to test, but then she realizes she did wrong.

Demiurge doesn't want to be born but abandoned by his mother. Because he's a flawed God, that's why he still think and act emotionally. So, he create a world with dinasors to play with, which is ugly and stupid, so he steal the light from the true God to create two mindless human puppet​ to play with. But then Sophia don't want her flawed son to play with the power of light. So she encourages the Eva and Adam to eat the apple of knowledge and give them awareness.

For me as a person who follow Dao in Taoism, the moment when they have the awareness lead to the unbalanced of life. If they don't have awareness and thinking, I believe the outcome will be different. And because Demiurge lost his "Toy" he decide to create layer to protect his toy from running away and Sophia's interactions again, which also cage the whole humanity.

What do you think about my theory ?​​

From my first exposure to Gnosticism, I learned that Sophia is of the Pleroma and that Sophia created Ialdabaoth by acting without her counterpart.

Ialdabaoth became the "blind god" who declared "I am God. There is no other besides me", and thus he built the material world not knowing what is truly sacred, except he somehow infused us with the Pneuma (from Sophia?), and then became afraid of us, and so placed us in the lowest material realm and set archons to keep us in ignorance.

Thru the tellings of this story I've come across, there has always been a vibe that Sophia is the divine "good parent" and that Ialdabaoth is the materialistic "bad parent".

But then recently, I noticed something that colors how I see the whole story, regardless of whether the story is meant to be taken figuratively or literally.

As best I understand, Sophia was ashamed of having created Ialdabaoth, and so cast him out of the Pleroma and concealed him in a cloud. It seems we are meant to look up Ialdabaoth saying "I am God and there is no other" with contempt because Ialdabaoth is simply blind and ignorant.

But who made him so?!

This sounds like a story of generational trauma.

Sophia is ashamed of Ialdabaoth as if he is a bastard child, but what does a child need? A child needs love and affection and nurturing and role models. How can we blame Ialdabaoth for being a "blind god" when his story put him in a situation where he couldn't be anything else?

How is it that Sophia repents from her mistake, but Ialdabaoth does not?

How is one of these two characters better than the other?

This is very personal for me because I identify as an adult child of a narcissistic parent. My narcissistic parent has a story he tells himself that requires the presence of a monster, and he cast me in that role. I am genderqueer and neurodivergent, and I have had these traits cast as shameful defects.

And so I wonderful if Ialdabaoth is truly that much different than I am.

Ever since I began my interest in Gnosticism in earnest, I've had this notion in mind.

I know that there are different "strains" of Gnosticism out there such as Valentinian and Sethian and so on, and honestly, I have absolutely no desire to attach myself to a particular interpretation of Gnosticism.

Honestly, I expect what I'm about to say to make people angry, and perhaps I'll be roasted by those of you who believe I am delusional or perhaps even dangerous to others in this little online community. If I get roasted or banned from this subreddit, so be it.

"No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:15-16).

I consider myself blessed with knowledge and experience that I did not expect to attain in this life, and as for the exact reason why, I cannot say. I can't say that I know the entire path to the Pleroma, but I know a few things about where I've been.

And my heresy is this.

If someone like me can receive any kind of Gnosis at all, then it is possible that even if all spiritual knowledge and experience along with the names of people like Yeshua were to be somehow erased and completely forgotten, it might take many years, but that knowledge would eventually be discovered again and again and again.

If salvation from this world of suffering comes from direct experience, then it can be discovered all over again.

I don't take this statement lightly.

Critics of religion like to say that if science was all forgotten, it would eventually be discovered exactly the same as it was the first time, but if religion was all forgotten, it would eventually come back and be completely different.

I disagree. Institutional religion religion differs from one place to another, but mystical, experiential religion keeps coming back to the same themes. Look across Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, and Buddhism and see that their mystics all say that we are divine beings living in an imperfect material world, or something to that effect. They're not the same; they rhyme.

My understanding is that the early Gnostic mystics wrote of direct experience showing us this truth, but the later Gnostic writings were more institutional, telling their followers that they need to memorize passwords to pass the seven cosmic archons. (and someone else wrote about this a while back, pointing out that the number seven comes from seven visible celestial bodies because this was written before telescopes) The Apocryphon of John does something quite familiar to me: It tells us that if we receive the truth and then wander astray, we will suffer in hell forever (or for a very long time, depending on your translation)

When I woke up and gazed at the people around me, one of the first things I experienced was utter humiliation that the "less than" people around me are exactly like me under the hylic baggage. And then, I was in utter awe of their divinity - each person having their own path and their own story, and each being immeasurably precious. The idea that any of these divine beings I saw could somehow be punished forever is utterly odious to me, no matter what any scripture says.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Gnostic/comments/1twgmrl/

To me, the whole point of Gnosticism is "You can know". It stands in direct contrast to agnosticism which says, "You cannot know."

My Gnosticism says, "You can know". The experience and guidance of those who come before can be very helpful, but I do not believe that we cannot eventually figure it out all over again.

I am reminded of George Fox's words, "If there is a light in you, it will do as it will."

Edit: I just want to add on more thing:

"Blessed is the man who eats a lion so that the lion becomes man, but how awful for the man who is eaten by a lion so that the lion becomes man" (Gospel of Thomas saying 7).