>I venture, after a lifetime's meditation upon Gnosticism, the judgement that it is pragmatically the religion of literature; Harold Bloom
What does Veeky Forums think of this?
Also side question, to all the Gnostics in the group: what do you think about Gnosticism being pejoratively associated with Narcissism and New Age spirituality?
epistemology mother fucker, you read it?
I am currently working through Robinson's Nag Hammadi Library with Layton's text as well - I suppose I could offer something.
Gnosticism has been very good at allowing a great deal of shit to be recast as "gnostic". If this is due to the syncretic nature in which it is presented or by simple virtue of it's more esoteric ideas, I don't know. Whatever the case may be, there is a very large gulf between what Gnosticism was and what many want it to be - in regards to the "New Age Spirituality" that you mention Gnosticism is a great tool to obfuscate their ideas enough to the point of not needing to defend them. Veiled nonsense that categorically cannot be understood unless you choose to accept it. Some might even argue that that is all Gnosticism ever was.
I'm on mobile now, but I can respond later with a little more detail if anyone wants to keep this going.
I definitely want to read more.
>Veiled nonsense that categorically cannot be understood unless you choose to accept it.
But this is the Gnostic idea. Epistemological formalism being secondary to the contemplation on the refractive nightmare of the here and now. Understanding it in anything but the broadest Logical strokes, beyond which most thinking will yield diminishing returns anyway, being redundant to the utmost utility of accepting it.
The core of Gnosticism, namely that the material world is unreal or a very degraded version of reality, predates Christianity and is a concept probably as old as humanity itself.
Its difficult to tell wihtout knowing what Bloom meant by Gnosticism. Did he mean literature is a method of gaining knowing of the ineffable? Did he mean it was a means of accessing the ideal as a revolt against the physical? Did he mean it reveals we are trapped by powers above us? Did he mean that liturature makes you less likely to have kids?
One aspect of Gnosticism in relation to literture is the simeltaneous worhips of the meaninglessness of life while also attempting to project the mind towards somthing perfect and lacking in pain. We, in the postreligious world, but not post superstitious world, can recognize the inherent uselessness of literature. However, it does bring about reveries of realites apart from ourselves. Literature is also in effect, the idealization of a reality that cannot be expressed in literature. It is a false ideal that is projected into the mind of the individual which is then projected onto the nature of being.
So no Bloom was wrong. The religion of literatre is not Gnosticism, but an ultimate fear of nihilism. It is a running away from the truth of meaninglessness while also realizing man is in a flawed world.
I agree with you for the most part, especially regarding Gnosticism as it applies to later Western Esotericism. However, when restricting the focus on to what may have been actually practiced by the "real" Gnostics, I think it begins to get a little more coherent.
The major issue I'm beginning to see is that what was written is very messy - multiple authors, inconsistent themes and symbols, and couching the ideas in pre-Christian terms (as points out).
Consider the Apocryphon of John, is it really that strange? Granted, Jesus coming down and explaining the cosmology of the universe like it was a new dungeons and dragons setting is strange to us now. However, the concepts of the Monad, the Aeons, the Demiurge and an imperfect world, etc. do not strike me as anymore outlandish or truly esoteric than the concept of the Trinity.
But take Gnosticism, bury it in the sand, and leave behind only the vague concepts. Let Hermeticism take a crack at it a millennium later and what do you get?
Knowing is not accessible through reading though. This, and it being the principle of the Gnostic idea, is the apotheosis of so many trains of thought, made apotheotic still by the polarization between the Logical folly of trying to read your way to realizing it and the instant resonance top-down Noetic introspection provides.
Thats a very fair point. We always have to make a distinctin between gnostic style texts, gnostic theology in pop-culture, and the crossover gnostic Western Occultism.
Interestingly, in reagards to the literature aspect, existentialism and nihilism carry a great deal of similar themes. The alienated individual, the desire for escape, etc.
Of course, hinduism was a method for escaping reincarnation long ago as well, and it would be difficult not to note the parralells between the various planes, beings, and reincarnation in the two "theologies." Plus, hinduism is as ill-defined as gnosticism.
Perhaps a better religion for literature would be the NeoPlatonic, due to its veiw of the flawed reality along with a monism in common with modern secularism while also doing away with the nihilism of existence.
In any case, what I think is often missed, is that the actual theology was not as important to the gnostics as the gnostic experience. If we secualrize this we can achieve a sort of real world jungian realiation of who we are as an individual. I fear that the commodification of all means of expression in modern America has caused all experience to be dictated on either its use a sharable document on hyperreal social networks or as somthing that can be sold and thus imbued with value instead of it gaining value through the "spiritual" experience of the individual in that moment.
What I mean is the demiurge has materialized all experience such that gain is now dictated in desires of others instead of having transcendent meaning to the individual.
>what do you think about Gnosticism being pejoratively associated with Narcissism and New Age spirituality?
by whom? Gnosticism is just early Christianity with a heavy Greek slant
Mostly blavatsly influence groups. Most new agers are pseudo Hindu now as far as I can tell, or neo pagan
What is it called if you are absolutely certain that god exists and that we each have an immortal soul but are equally certain that all religions are false and worthless?
Undefined theist?
Could call yourself and theo-immortalist to get the immortal soul part in.
Immortheist to up the Latin aspect
Theo-Immortalis
This would mean immortality is the gift of god
How are you certain god exists without having any ideas about the nature of this god?
How are you able to be certain that he is the only god?
Through Gnostic experience, duh. Read the room
This. I like that Gnostics have no priesthood and therefore no dogma.
which is why they're extinct lol
Han Jonas' work discusses the "alienation" within Gnosticism and how it differentiates Gnosticism from other religions - an echo to your argument.
Furthermore, the platonic and neoplatonic relationships with Gnosticism are well documented, so I can see how Bloom could land on Gnosticism as "the religion of literature".
Making the distinctions are important to me because my principal interest in Gnosticism is historical - specifically the Syrian-Egyptian branch. Without the context of Bloom's quote (with his work I am not familiar), my impression is of a Gnostic in the Western Occultism/Esoteric tradition or a "Gnostic" like Jung rather than historical 3rd century Gnostic.
That great enlightenment ideal: Deism.
More to do with the Catholics branding them as heretics and destroying their works. Gnostics were salted from the Earth and went into hiding in barbarian territories.
Wow you're dumb.
No shit it had to do with the Catholics, but the reason that was possible is because the Catholics had a power structure that the Gnostics lacked b/c muh feels.
Rather you're ignorant of early Christianity. Gnostics were still practicing contemporary to the early Church, which is why they are explicitly outlawed as heretics and why people like Irenaeus are still compelled to write polemics against them.
I like how you're too dumb to follow a discussion so you just keep posting common knowledge facts that have nothing to do with the point being made.
>ad hominem
wow u sure showed me, ur so smart
I'd argue that the Gnostics most definitely had structure and "priesthood." The translation and preservation of the Nag Hammadi codices stands as a testament to that.
The diversity of early Christians is well known - couching the heresiological treatment of Gnosticism as "the Catholics" bringing an enormous hammer down on one small sect in an otherwise homogeneous ocean of Christians is categorically false.
Catholic Church is literally the Roman authority. Whats there to argue, like this guy keeps reeing about, nobody else had the authority to suppress competing denominations.
The Four Marks of the Church were not established until 381 AD - long after Irenaeus was dead.
I understand the sentiment (that the Romans = Catholics), but in Irenaeus' time the idea of "one, holy, catholic and apostolic church" was still getting kicked around - not yet doctrine.
Being associated with most BS new age spirituality I think does a service for the most part.
I, for one, would love that all people developed their spiritual side because I'm certain that it is just as important as the intellectual or physical side of a person, it teaches you how to self-reflect and thus have more rewarding life (in some regards) and for the more acute minds, it helps with bringing forth hard questions that develop a lot of discussion, but obviously not everyone is interested or prepared for it, not because it's some super deep stuff that requires rituals of passing to understand, but I think you need to have some spiritual experience to believe it. However, if someone is so close minded and hopes to be spoon-fed all the knowledge behind any tradition/religion without taking time to ask or know where to look, and even then he obviously risks being duped and fed into a dumb cult, and therefor brands all of it as stupid lies, then I think the western Narcissistic schools helps to weed out some people that aren't ready for it.
If anything, Gnosticism, Hermeticism and most mystic/esoteric schools out there teach you exactly the opposite of New Age American bullshit, but I guess western culture doesn't really want the boring reality of constant meditation and self reflection, positive thinking, mindfulness, etc... And instead they want cool rituals, powers and becoming an aryan beast with magic sexual powers overnight, thus the bullshit sophists appear and they fall directly into it. It's mostly people deceiving themselves I suppose.
Anyways, I'm happy that Veeky Forums is spiritual in some regards. I get really tired of the: ">tfw too smart, nihilism is the only true solution. I'm so depressed about the world, but I do nothing about it ;_;" because it's a sterile discussion, everyone (and people much smarter than us) wrote their thoughts about the topic and it's a dead end.
Gnosticism also predates Christianity. In fact Abrahamism is probably the worst thing that ever happened to it.
I think Bloom is using Gnosticism in one sense that it's revealed to some people: the hatred of the creator of the universe (=Evil demiurge), and thus of typical authority, rules, a church hierarchy, obedience, etc. A worship of a Luciferian/Promethean ideal of rebellion, bringing the fire to man, of consciousness being a burden and a punishment, great heroes and rebels being punished by the evil in power, etc.
These are indeed both Gnostic and heavily literary themes.
I believe most people dont have a spiritual side, Rather I think a lot of personality traits we consider admirable are far rarer than people imagine. I see people struggle with basic things like autonomous thought every day. AI research has already demonstrated that free will is a skill, and not equal state amongst people (look it up, some wild experiments). Christian literalists are a good example of people lacking a spiritual side.
Well, I have no information about those AI experiments, so if you could provide a link I'd be grateful.
That is fair to assume at first glance, but *most*, and I say most because some people are too intellectually impaired, like Downs Syndrome people, have the mental capacity and potentiality to live a spiritual life, given they are provided with the resources and motivation needed.
The thing is though that in life almost everyone has neither the motivation or very bad spiritual resources. I can only speak for myself as a South American, but Roman-Catholics aren't the best source to read up, learn or experience spirituality, they work better as a social control institution in very mischievous ways (plus, the whole pedophilia scandal), therefor, there is no 'guru' figure here. Although I'm a great admirer of the Jesus Christ figure for his message, The Bible has some unremarkable passages sometimes too, and there is no Grand Narrative, in fact the Old and New Testament present extremely opposite figures of God. The Old Testament shows a 'Saturn'/Fatherly figure that must be obeyed or he will punish man and you see that through all the stories. The New Testament shows a more loving and heroic version of God, with Jesus representing God, since he is the focus of the whole story, it's like the Krishna/Vishnu relationship, with God being Vishnu and Jesus being Krishna, mostly God is seen as a loving father of all that preaches love, instead of a wrathful punishing one. Well, the thing is that here most sources can't be trusted and they give contradictory figures of what God is. And I bet to assume that in the more Lutheran world there is much more focus on materiality rather than spirituality, specially in the US where the focus in put on making money fast and fucking a hot wife. There are also the self-help traditions that arguably have good content and honest motives, but fall short on trying to put substance into the teachings, even Stoicism, I personally feel, lacks mysticism to make it more compelling, which Taoism does have.
Then we come to the issue of motivation. Generally speaking spirituality and psychology were understood as one for many years in almost all schools, but the separation and 'scientification' of it made the whole study oneself being focused on psychology and psychiatry. Everything got spread around and there is not one discipline that tries to bring forth valuable empirical spiritual knowledge about spirituality without being clouded by a group of New Age BS cultists. Now you have little to no reason for trying to study spirituality since society tells you: "Go to a therapist or a psychiatrist to deal with your demons" and that is reasonable, but most people do not need it, they need self reflection and mindfulness.
I feel like most roads have been cut and you need to go through very rough ones to arrive somewhere, and that makes most people throw the towel too soon.
Google around and im sure you'll turn up stuff. Here's a bookmark i dug up, sorry i dont have more mainstream sources. most AI research goes ignored by the mainstream press. journals.sagepub.com
bump
>what is it called when you believe something without any evidence?
A delusion
Mindfulness meditation is more prevalent in the US than occult rituals.
People basically do what they're told. They're told to work, watch tv, and post on social media. If they were told to do things that were better for them, then they would do that.
We're all a product of our environment to some extent.
I agree that most people are sub-par.
Gnosticism is a massive meme religion right now like Zoroastrianism. They're the edgy Satanist kids of last year.
It really is no better than New Age trash.
the point of life is not merely to know, but to be good, and to LOVE.
...
knowers don't like this!
Jesus talks about hellfire and brimstone much more often than JHVH does
How can you even be Gnostic? Weren't their books destroyed, their teachers killed, their beliefs lost forever, leaving us only with second hand accounts and suppositions about what they believed.
>thread about gnosticism
>its filled with elitist pseuds
Why am I not surprised? Horton Davies was right when he said that gnosticism and esotericism is just for wanky intellectuals
Sounds kind of right. It's attractive to someone who wants to believe that somehow knowledge is power in a real sense. That if one can just venture deep into the heart of the world there are some connections, gossamer threads, leylines, that one can tap into and see what no one else can see, sense what no one else can sense. There is just some insight missing before real meaning reveals itself. Everyone contradiction can be resolved, that you can determine the valid questions from the answers, that there is a perfection somewhere slumbering in a library, uncovered by centuries of thought and experimentation. Wisdom, beyond the veil, outside of this universe and enveloping it.
Maybe this is all just confirmation bias, but I have noticed how self-professed gnostics generally seem to be lacking in humility.
Gnostics hate Gnosticism as prescriptive Historic Ideology and/or Scripture more than anyone else.
See:
Archaelogy keeps turning up Gnostic texts, famously the Nag Hammadi was the motherlode, but they are still turning up texts, and will continue to do so. Theres also a bunch lost on the antique market somewhere. Archaelogy is an active field, especially in this area.
That said, there are huge holes in our knowledge and anyone who claims to be practicing Gnostic is full of shit. Neo-Gnosticism is pretty common in Biblical scholars since the 80s. (A big part of this is because Gnosticism seems to value gender equality, desu)
Gnosticism doesn't sound practical at all to me. How would the ideal Gnostic society function? Would it just be like Gnostic Alexandria?
>Gnosticism
>society
pick one
Gnosticism is rooted in Narcissism, the only reason why you wouldn't create a bunch of hedonists is if you submit to the Romantic idea that people are good without societal structures around them
Gnostic societies sound like ascetic, communal villages
Gross
Gnostic society would just be pretty much like todays society. Christian values, but religion is a private matter, and knowledge is something worth pursuing.
what about things like market economies? that sounds too le Demiurge for it to be accepted
it'd be like Christian socialism or something
How would the ideal non-Gnostic exit from Society and embodiment function?
Gnosticism is just a misunderstanding of Plato
how could anyone possibly answer this question
What's with the association of Gnosticism and Narcissism that people are trying to push?
If you go by that, any discipline can be rooted in Narcissism and a way to feed our ego, since most of them have power in their knowledge and you could make the connection between the study and the search of power. And basically any spiritual study can also be considered narcissistic since the connection with The One/The Divine is trying to pleasure us. Hell, even Buddhism can be Narcissistic before it reaches the death of Ego.
What's the point, Shitposting or actually trying to make a critique?
There's a difference between fulfilling the desires of the ego and Narcissism. The latter is when it's so self-indulgent that there's no self-reflection.
My critique is that Gnostics will inevitably care more about salvation through gnosis rather than caring for your neighboring man.
/pol/ tryhard lol
fuck off shitlib
I found this on Bloom and the Gnostics:
firstprinciplesjournal.com
For a lit board, I'm surprised posts come before the simplest googling. Look at the context, he's talking about historic authors identity and imagination.
Interpersonality is inherently useless and immoral. Mutual harm between persons plays the least important role in all of our suffering, mutual aid provides the least amount relief. That which benefits the most from it is the monstrous wheel of the Cosmos that gets to keep spinning and crushing all yous and all neighbors alike.
But that's an issue with people's morality and interpretation of Gnosticism and not with the teaching and texts itself (which vary in some aspects).
Christianity teaches, fundamentally, to love your neighbor as you love yourself, that's the whole maxim of the religion, but you see a lot of selfish and self-assorted Christians. Who do we blame here, we should say that the religion is at fault or that the practitioners are wrong? I think the second one. I cannon't think of a single religion that can't be associated to bad human traits because of bad practitioners.
Now you can also say that this is more prevalent in Gnosticism from your experience, but that's more of an anecdote and we can't be sure, if anything the number of bad practitioners should be more in almost all other religions since Gnosticism is so small.
Another argument you can make is that Gnosticism is very associated with Narcissism and people with those characteristics gravitate towards it, but again, the texts don't say anything about being narcissistic as a positive, if anything, the rejection of the materialistic world/the demiurge is trying to push people away from that world view, and that peace can only be achieved by spiritual development and connection with The One/God/The Divine/etc... much like Hinduism.
Another point you could make is that Gnostics don't put their focus in others, they don't try to salve people from the material world, but again, I think that's a difficult topic to touch, since it has to do with free will and self deception. Evangelizing isn't exactly the right moral approach in the contemporary world and many see it as an insult, to each his own is preached a lot right now. And what about people that want to be deceived? There are many that are content with their current non-spiritual lives, why should others get in their way? Isn't part of a rewarding experience of life to discover things by your own? It's quite complicated to say the least.
Excellent find desu.
Gnosis and Gnosticism are two very different things -- the former is a term used loosely by various New Age fractions, the latter a religious movement of Late Antiquity that relied on Christian Apocrypha and distorted the ideas of Hermeticism and Platonism for it's own idiosyncratic use. Plotinus has an interesting tract against the Sethian Gnostics in the Enneads.
I wouldn't call Gnosticism the religion of literature. The people he mentioned in his article, such Blake, Shelley and Yeats were much closer to Neoplatonism.
It is just that both Platonism and Christianity had a cynical view of the corporeal world. The great writers of history were in many respects reacting against these notions, exalting nature in the process (just like the Gnostics rejected the Demiurgos as evil and elevated Sophia), but they had no reliance on the Gnostic doctrines.
How exactly are the Romantics Gnostics when they espouse the beauty of the natural world? The basic core of Gnosticism is that the only good things in this world are intellectual non corporeal things.
Methinks Bloom doesnt know what hes talking about (shocking) probably because he relies always on outdated literary references and hearsay rather than historical evidence.