Gnosticism vs hermetism vs neoplatonism

anyone care to explain what they disagree about?

Veeky Forums memes are fucking cancer

Veeky Forums memes are the future.

Can't even hold the rope long enough to count the knots.

Use of Christian, Pagan and platonic symbols, respectively (i.e. crosses, Egyptian deities, planet orbits...) but later Gnostics and Proclus borrow readily from Pagans, as well as Plato himself crediting Greek and Egyptians priests for his myths.

Most Gnostic sects having a negative view of matter and its creator, neoplatonists being far more optimistic.

op here going to explain a little bit of what i know

gnosticism-
syncretic alexandrian combination of jewish mysticism, early christianity, platonism, etc. catch-all term for 2nd c. christian writers who wanted to shit on heretics. believed that god was ineffable, and that through some sort of fall, sophia's (one of god's hypostases/emanations) aeon (counterweight?) the demiurge was created. this demiurge, sometimes linked with the old testament god, created the evil physical world that currently traps the spiritual world. gnosis comes from revelation (sometimes in the form of jesus) and understanding that there is still a spark of the original divine within every human and that salvation comes from this gnosis.

hermetism-
based on writings of hermes trismegistus. as above so below. believed in the platonic emanations like the gnostics, but did not believe there was anything inherently evil in them. rather, understanding how the emanations work (through astrology, science, etc.) could lead one back to the godhead.

neoplatonism-
(ancient neoplatonism) - term used to talk mostly about plotinus and his followers. believed there to be esoteric meaning in plato, and that humans are capable of coming to know god through contemplation of the emanations from the godhead.

seems like some kind of syncretic combination of these three and kabbalah, etc. made their way in arabic philosophy, where sufis turned it into something that emerged as alchemy in europe. is this directionally correct?

adding a question to this. what about hermes would plotinus have taken issue with?

Islamic philosophers did the Start with the Greeks thing and used whatever Greek fragments and pre-scientific understanding of medicine and chemistry they had to make their own progresses, with Jābir ibn Hayyān onwards discovering how to write texts that aren't a fragmentary, allegoric mess, and that involve some manner of experimentation.

So from pre-scientific mysticism we go to a proto-scientific alchemy that is going to resemble chemistry more and more. Ibn Hayyān has been called a sufi, I don't recall Al-Kindī and Al-Rāzī being sufis.

Arabic texts get translated into Latin from the 12th century onwards by European clergymen and monks.

>kabbalah
Nope

>what about hermes would plotinus have taken issue with?
That you need divine revelation, reason is enough. Demonstration, proof, and dialectic replace prophets for Plotinus. He's a philosopher, he always called himself a Platonist.

But really, unless you're a "Plotinist" philosopher* who only feels the need for Plato and the Enneads, the readerships of Gnostic, Hermetic and Neoplatonic texts borrow from all three.

They all agree about non-attachment to the material as the way to self-knowledge, and that a love for ones's soul, and purification and emancipation of it are the path towards a return to the One True God.

Which is something that you should be able to observe in many more religions.

*Another note on Plotinus is that Porphiry tells us that his teacher wanted to study in India. He wanted it so bad he went out of his way to join the army in the hope of going there, ultimately he couldn't and opened a school in Rome.

If Plotinus were you he'd have read the shit out of Vedas and Upanishads by now. He wouldn't touch a Gnostic text that treats the demiurge as evil, but maybe he would consider Sethian and Valentinian "Gnostics."

thanks—what did plotinus know of india that made him so interested?

and just to make it super reductive:
all three believe in something like the emanation from the one and the and the superiority of spirituality over the material world. gnostics believed we've been trapped by an evil entity in the material and that the way out was revelation of the divine within, or gnosis; hermetists agreed re: revelation, but didn't believe there to be anything inherently evil in the whole setup; and neoplatonists agreed with the hermetists that there was nothing evil afoot, but didn't think revelation was needed.

how did the non-christian gnostics think revelation happened exactly? divine intervention? some kind of theurgy?

>what did plotinus know of india
I'm positive his interest was sparked by tales of the Gymnosophists i.e. Hellenic converts to Buddhism or other ascetic types, and any information on India available to a Hellenic philosopher scholar living in Alexandria.

>how did the non-christian gnostics think revelation happened exactly? divine intervention? some kind of theurgy?
The myth goes like this: this cool important guy who is already a legendary wise and learned master has a mystical experience in which a divine being gives him even greater, secret teachings sorrounding the true nature of the cosmos, mankind and the One True God.

Recordings of said experience and the esoteric teachings therein have been preserved since time immemorial through ancient Egyptian mystics, and now they are available in a convenient Greek translation so that thou can join our community and partake in the secret wisdom so that thou can follow in the cool important guy's footsteps.

What's the reason for the Gnostics to have such views like for the malevolent demiurge? Why is he trapping us, according to them? What are his intentions?

In order:

>the world is degenerative refraction of the truth
>the world is desirable byproduct of the truth
>cosmic cuckoldry

Note that cuckoldry is a serious qualification, regardless of memes.

read the Pistis Sophia and stop being a brainlet

And the path leads to gnosis.

>hermetists agreed re: revelation, but didn't believe there to be anything inherently evil in the whole setup; and neoplatonists agreed with the hermetists that there was nothing evil afoot
It's a bit more complicated than that, because matter is still in a relationship with evil, as in there can be no evil without matter, your soul still needs to be purified from the temptations that come from being attached to matter.

The One True God is transcendent, immaterial and good just like the Gnostics, except he is also the creator of the world.

Gnostics that hate the demiurge sidestep the problem of evil entirely by blaming all the shit that happens on the demiurge. Hermeticists tell of the ancestral man's curiosity for nature leading to some kind of fall. Plotinus says matter is a byproduct of the One's overabundance of power.

For Plotinus too you re-unite to the One by means of introspection, meditation and an ethical life, the goal being nothing short of becoming God, and the point being that you can achieve perfect life without an afterlife.

I would say Hermeticists and Neoplatonists all believe in reincarnation or transmigration of the soul. Gnostic views of the afterlife are varied and a mess, save yourself from this physical vessel or else it's hell, annihilation, or reincarnation - reincarnation being pretty much like hell for a pessimist Gnostic sect that calls life in this world and its creator evil.

This evil demiurge wants to usurp the One True God and had the brilliant idea to create the world to be its tyrant, evil is in this world because he is evil and a sorry excuse of a creator, no Creator worth His Name would make such terrible creation full of grief, pain and death.

In the last chapter of Hans Jonas' book on Gnosticism, he says it's a form of existentialism.

So being an exalted Platonist marks you as a cosmic cuck, is that it?

No, it makes you a happy man, he's a troll.

t. weaklings

>That you need divine revelation, reason is enough. Demonstration, proof, and dialectic replace prophets for Plotinus. He's a philosopher, he always called himself a Platonist.

Only if you consider Phenomenal Personhood to be the hypostasis of Mind, which is explicitly not the case in the Gnostic idea, culminating in Hermes himself being "not real" as the ultimate argument against prophets as part of the larger argument against History, Time, Space, and the separation of God; and the realization that all of this is knowable by one's self through reason alone.

Troll or not, I just don't get it why people always dislike Plotinus so much.

>What are his intentions?

Intention itself, as a redundant action relative to reflection.

This is pretty good. But why does no one talk about how the story of the demiurge's conception is an almost exact mirror of the greek myth of Hephaestus?

because neoplatonism

>the demiurge is good

what is that picture supposed to be?

what is the story of hephaestus that lines up so well? i thought the demiurge was considered an architect, not a smith? is there a story where hephaestus creates the world?

Something about him smells of charlatan.