I want to get into Gnosticsim, where should I start? Who are the best writers on this subject?

I want to get into Gnosticsim, where should I start? Who are the best writers on this subject?

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read the nag hammadi texts

From Wikipedia:

>The Nag Hammadi library (also known as the "Chenoboskion Manuscripts", or as the "Gnostic Gospels"[1]) is a collection of Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. Thirteen leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by a local farmer named Muhammed al-Samman.[2]

Sounds pretty cool.

Why is Veeky Forums so enamored with Gnosticism? Not to be rude to the OP but I see so many threads about it. What is its significance beyond being a fairly esoteric sect that inspired other esoteric sects later on?

I was just given "The Gnostics" by Jaques Lacarriere. He seems to be an apologist who has an animus towards the Church Fathers, but w/e. There is a tonne of material on Gnosticism at archive.org here is a decent collection: archive.org/details/GnosticismItsHistoryAndInfluenceBenjaminWalker

"waaaa I h8 SJW's" ->Peterson -> Jung -> Gnosticism and esoteric Christianity.

>I want to get into Gnosticsim,
Remember when you were 16? It's basically like that. Be angry at the world.

No idea it is nihilistic bullshit and such a poisonous worldview to hold - the physical world is a prison and all creation is flawed. No wonder the Church Fathers stamped out that heresy.

I like its fundamental premise that this world is evil and that it was created by an evil deity. I also like the notion of spiritual ascension through Gnosis.

I don't however like its end goal, that of escaping this world and from what little I know the process of Gnosis sounds too much like Platonism.

I would very much like to learn more about it so I can better inform my opinions on it so far.

Its interesting, highly similar to some old yoga texts which lends credence to either the "jesus went to india" theory or the perennial philosophy

Dont know if you consider Climacus a church father, but he wrote on renunciation of the world in his Ladde of Divine Asceng. Almost all mystic traditions have this feature

It's an autist posting literally the same thread over and over because for some reason he thinks it's bait.

I'm not familiar with Climacus. The only writings of the early Church Fathers I have personally read on the Gnostics and other contemporary cults is "On Heresies" by St John of Damascus. He was something of a polymath of the liberal arts and wrote so clearly and concisely on law, philosophy and theology. He is a joy to read.

people like to think there are hidden truths in Chaldean knowledge. Hence the popular appeal of Dan Brown's novels

who knows, maybe there really is. i haven't read the primary materials yet so i couldn't say

>lends credence to either the "jesus went to india" theory
Not really, that's crackpot bullshit

Not really evil, just a product of ignorance and delusion. The basic premise is that all is one, therefore all dichotomies like between you and the world, are illusions.

This raises the question of why illusions exist at all, to which gnosticism answers "because wisdom created them in her ignorance". A paradoxical statement, if you think the dichotomy between ignorance and wisdom should hold (note she is said to have done this without the consent of her consort). I think the whole idea is that wisdom is the divine attribute that requires experience, and therefore a world and time, to flower. Compare Sophia to the indian concept of Maya and I think it begins to make sense.

Sorry if this all sounds like schizo babble, but such is mysticism

Okay, no that makes sense. I didn't realise it was that similar to Buddhism or as you say Hinduism.

How many tenets of Christianity do Gnostics hold? Do they believe that Jesus was literally the incarnation of God for example?

1) The world and everything in it is totally corrupt because it was created by an inferior and utterly evil, renegade Godling

2) The Creation was but the bizarre plaything of this Satanic rebel, a depraved spiritual power who is without any redeeming virtues.

3) This evil "God" is worshiped by the Jews, who are thereby an accursed people, and conventional Christians have been falling into the same trap.

4) Jesus is not the son of this evil creature, but is a teacher, or a sage, or (sometimes) a spiritual being having the mystical powers needed to penetrate this dreadful fraud. His teachings can free an enlightened few.

5) Because the material world is utterly corrupt, extreme asceticism, including celibacy, is the only option.

Gnosticism is incredibly stupid. The authors of these "lost gospels" were trying to assimilate Christianity into paganism which is one reason why the gnostics were not persecuted by Romans while Christians were.

Read The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity by David Brakke.

Then, if you want primary sources;
Plato's Timaeus, but you should read Phaedo and Republic first
New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha
Nag Hammadi Scriptures by Meyer
Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius by Brian P. Copenhaver
Enneads by Plotinus

It solves the problem of evil. This is why the church fathers stamped it out. Also noobs think it sounds cool, like magical Christianity or something.

Gnosticism is just an intellectual strain of Satanism. This is the reason why it was stamped out and why noobs are drawn to it.

isn't that worldview a fundamental part of Buddhism and Hinduism and the symbol of the Cross and the notion of original sin? Samsara and Maya?

Virtually none of this is true. You have no idea what you're talking about.

Also you're basing the "stupidity" of Gnosticism on nothing more than your misapplication of its dogma, which is all an elaboration anyways.
Gnosticism is Christianity's mysticism.
The central perception of Gnosticism is that we do not belong here, and this is an idea that exists in literally every culture on the planet and an idea that will always spontaneously arise regardless, which is why people are perennially attracted to Gnosticism.
Gnosticism has fucking nothing to do with paganism. If anything it's totally opposite. Paganism is a radical acceptance and worship of the world.

Also your presentation of 5 is pure ideology.
Asceticism was only a sect of Gnosticism. A competing teaching was that since we all contain the divine spark that anything is permissible to us.

Some actual recommendations, finally. Thanks for that.

Don't, get into Catholicism instead. I suggest a compendium of the Popes' encyclicals.

I've never posted this thread before, I'm just interested in Gnosticism.

I already consider myself a Christian mystic, I don't particularly like Catholicism due to its assertion of The Pope's divine authority. In my eyes only Jesus can take on that role, unless someone manages to achieve transcendence and moral purification, which I don't believe anyone ever has done.

Absolutely heretical.

Against Heresies by St. Irenaeus of Lyons is pretty based desu.

Doesn't this prove the point?

Yeah, Jesus and everyone else, possibly everything else too. Though, from the vantage point of Gnosis, the importance of Historic personhood relative to the importance of ideas in and of themselves is only dealt with through concatenating paradoxes. I suppose culminating in the felt experience of Divine incarnation juxtaposed with abjection and metasuicide.

Its a form of Pantheism them essentially?

Except this betrays a blatant lack of understanding of Gnosticism. Don't buy the /fringe/ meme of "LE EBULL DEMIURGE N ARCHONS," as that general take on Gnosticism makes up less than half of Gnostic sects.

Pantheism in the sense that the "Pan" is wrong and redundant to God the One.

Bloom.

>solves the problem of evil
Except ut doesn't.

I smell antitrinitarism.

Guys, the Demiurge and the Archons are metaphors. You could say that Time is the meta-apophatic cloak covering your Mind, that beating around the bush and refusing to admit it's an agent of terror and nothing else is the thing that gives it power, etc. etc. etc. Or you can call it an Archon, its technicalities being far less important than its function relative to your experience.

Are you seriously asserting that the original Gnostics, who are responsible for what are now known as the foundational Gnostic texts, subscribed to what is now known as the "Psychological Model" and only believed what they were writing to be symbolism and metaphor? Because we're going to need a helluva a lot more than your word saying so, if you really want us to accept this assertion.

Kind of, though in the Idealist thinking underlining the Gnostic texts, the term "Psychological" with its Dualist intracranial implications and the immutable boundary between Subject and Object doesn't really make any sense. The description of the Demiurge entity being an extreme condensation of Epistemological mountains doesn't make it "not real". In fact, from the Gnostic perspective, this is the only measure of "reality". The actual matter of the entity itself being in any capacity is almost irrelevant.

How can you say that the Demiurge actually existing or not existing has no significant bearing upon Gnostic philosophy? And again, I'd be interested in your reference points for your 'sort of' assertion RE: the original Gnostics not believing in the literal existence of Demiurge, Archons, et. al. Because it is one thing to say "I don't personally think it matters whether or not they exist or even what the Gnostics believed about it" and quite another to say "the Gnostics did not believe in the literal existence of the things of which they wrote, but rather saw it all as mere symbolism."

>The description of the Demiurge entity being
From?

>Epistemological mountains
Sounds a bit more like Leviathan or IAO to me.

>from the Gnostic perspective, this is the only measure of "reality".
Which Gnostic perspective?

Just like Hermes existing or not existing has no significant bearing on the Corpus Hermeticum. Or the trolley existing or not existing has no significant bearing on the trolley problem.

welcome to /psd/ - Pseud General

>in the Idealist thinking underlining the Gnostic texts, the term "Psychological" with its Dualist intracranial implications
But a number of these groups (i.e. Barbeloites) were nondualist. Go read Thunder: Perfect Mind again.

That's...what I said.

As usual for esoteric queries on Veeky Forums, my library.
Link to the Gnostic folder:
mega.nz/#F!xYpWSZIA!AIJmBr-RrBJeUdGwjt1b3A

The absolute hands down best intro text (and many people have echoed my recommendation here after I directed them to it) is Kurt Rudolph's "Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism" which is an ethnohistorical reconstruction of Gnostic life across times, locations, and sects.

It is?
Your post is hard to unpack on a few vectors. Pardon. I thought you were asserting a pan-Gnostic dualism (which would imply the Gnostics were a monolithic sect rather than a poorly labeled cluster of divergent cults).

>Kurt Rudolph
mah nigga

Pic related.

>Salem-Kirban
Is that any good?

>everything I don't like is nihilism

>muh Zizek

nobody cares

How does Gnosticism stand on the:
"Books are just dead things".

Or more practically put, could one gain any sort of relevant (related to Gnosticism) gnosis without books/texts/teachers?
It's more about the experience for You personally then just get knowledge by reading, right?
Is this because Gnosis cannot by caught by words?

>pic related, my only texts (including part, still busy, of the exegesis of pkd) on gnosticism.

the way I take it is that its literally post-structuralism applied to religious experience. Basically anything of a religious nature that is tabulated will become contaminated by human understanding and specific agendas of those disseminating it. You can only ultimately trust those spiritual truths revealed to you personally.

Yes. It's a KJV with "for Dummies" style footnotes that tell you how you're supposed to interpret the text. Sometimes they give useful historical context, other times I want to slap the editors for enforcing a literal interpretation. It has a very extensive commentary on the Book of Revelation, and honestly has kind of a culty vibe to it. I keep it because it's KJV, lays flat, and I'm fond of it (bought at NSA used book fair for a dollar).

>You can only ultimately trust those spiritual truths revealed to you personally.
This, which feeds into the extant evidence of Gnostic initiation systems.

You can read all the things and meditate a shitload, but NOTHING substitutes for the hard won fruits of personal Gnosis.

I, uh, think I'll stick with Strong and Scholem, thanks tho.

You should still read and understand the Gnostic Scriptures, and any and all religioud/spiritual system's scripture that you can get your hands on. Don't be like these /fringe/ memers who say Gnosticism is whatever they want to define it as, because "It's all about MUH PERSONAL GNOSIS I don't rely on books I just make shit up as I go along and interpret every phenomenon as a particular dealing of god with me individually" so that they have no idea what various actual Gnostic sects believe and are essentially just LARPing and calling it Gnosticism!

more, for the curious

nah prob bob. I don't read this one much, for the reasons given above. The pocket NIV is dog earned and markered though.

>which would imply the Gnostics were a monolithic sect rather than a poorly labeled cluster of divergent cults

This is the main problem in all these discussions. People wanting to coherd and mainstream a multitude of divergent traditions far older than christianity into a single one size fits all category.

For example: the demiurge is a term coined by Plato independently of numerous parallels or similarities before or after. And Plato's demiurge was not malevolent in any way. Compare to the Apocryphon of John in which the creator, Yaltabaoth, is portrayed as an explicitly malevolent creature.

There's a passage in Baudolino by Umberto Eco, in which the protagonist falls in love with a female faun belonging to a tribe of "gnostic" priestesses. An entire chapter is dedicated to her explanation of their cosmology. It's a good introduction to gnosis/gnosticism. Light and entertaining while well informed and well written. It's also a very touching love story. Good place to start.

's megalink is a treasure trove. But don't break your neck

>every metaphysical assertion of dogma is le metaphor meme tee hee

Fuck off dude, seriously.
These people weren't getting cute and playing symbol games like a bored 21st century NEET. They were prophets and trying to form a system to explain their direct encounters with overwhelming beings and extraordinary worlds. These people literally died for this shit, it's not a fucking metaphor for you to get cute with and do your little THIS equals THAT thing.

nice bait kid

I'm not sure about the cross and sin, but yes reincarnation is a belief that Gnosticism shares with Buddhism and Hinduism

Thank you all,
I do have the small book "The Gnostics - the first Christian heretics ~Sean Martin" recently bought to tickle me further {Curiously placed between Programming-language books; though I found a second copy in the religion section}, but The Kurt Rudolph & Meyer books are ones to look out for when scavenging for books.

Where can i find this image in HD?

Can you share the complete folder and not just the Gnostic one?

Is the real god not omnipotent in gnostic theology? Is that why the demiurge could create the universe against god's will?

mega.nz/#F!AE5yjIqB!y7Vdxdb5pbNsi2O3zyq9KQ

kek

Thanks

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?

Holy shit. Everything is being criticized under the /pol/ lens. Now gnosticism too? What is up with this

The fact that Christianity was likely based off of previous myths is high, highly interesting. Gnisticism seems to be where that kind of thought meets with a genuine religious texts. They give insight into another interpretation of the abrahamic religions.

>What is up with this
Peterson getting meme'd into critical mass.

I think his lectures are almost incoherent but there is worse to react against.
In another thread someone literally said "if it's not white male or capitalism you people throw a fit". This was thrown out on a post that had nothing to do with either.

I don't know. I'll name up too though!

Wow!
How much have you read? Would you be up for just riffing on this?

>How much have you read
It's my library.
I've probably read like two thirds of it.

>there is worse to react against
Probably, I've just noticed a DRASTIC increase of folks proclaiming to be experts in comparative religion because they watched a couple hours of JP's youtubes.

How much fluff is this stuff compared to substance?

Idk about gnosticism but in the actual bible it's implied that there's a difference between God and Yahweh / Lord God.
He's not omnipotent in cannon but idk whether or not the scripture is referring to God, Lord God, or Lord when he's not omnipotent. They change pretty quickly
ie Saul (paraphrased):
>The spirit of the God filled him and he gave a [mean look] and the fear of the Lord entered the people
That kind of thing. In Genesis it implies they're different people.

about you

That as well

>How much fluff is this stuff compared to substance?
The library?
It's all substance.

>I want to get into Gnosticsim
Why?

>What's your problem with, say Magick in Theory and Practice or Magick Without Tears?

Wew! I read pic related as a teenager, 20 years ago. It seemed half catalog and half Crowley trying to get into young women's panties. Not gonna lie, it embittered me a bit against the fellow and ceremonial magic. Browsing through just now, there are many references I understand now. Should I give it another shot? I've recently read The Book of Lies and The Book of the Law. Law was okay for beastly magical poetry, Lies was cryptic nonsense (imo).

>It seemed half catalog and half Crowley trying to get into young women's panties
>Magick in Theory and Practice or Magick Without Tears
This is Veeky Forums. Show me in the aforementioned texts, where and how.

>The Book of the Law
Too many people get too caught up in Liber L vel Legis. Shelf it. Ignore it. For now.

Liber 333 is like his best book though.
>Ch. 50
>THE VIGIL OF ST. HUBERT

In the forest God met the Stag-beetle.
"Hold! Worship me!" quoth God. "For I am All-Great, All- Good, All Wise....The stars are but sparks from the forges of My smiths...."
"Yea, verily and Amen," said the Stag-beetle, "all this do I believe, and that devoutly."
"Then why do you not worship Me?"
"Because I am real and your are only imaginary."
But the leaves of the forest rustled with the laughter of the wind.
Said Wind and Wood: "They neither of them know anything!"
*
That's pure Trekchö.

>St. Irenaeus of Lyons
You mean the French Jew who tried to take over Christianity like the other Church Jew Fathers who realized that Christianity forever and eternally BTFO their retarded religion so their philosophy and writings formed the foundations of the school of thought which eventually became Catholicism?

I may have overstated my claim a bit. His advertisement and invitations did strike me unseemly at the time, enough to stick in my memory for two decades. This is the passage I was thinking of, from 'Improvising a Temple'.

>The Wand. Let this be simple, straight and slim! Have you an Almond or Witch Hazel in your garden—or do I call it park? If so, cut (with the magick knife—I would lend you mine) a bough, as nearly straight as possible, about two feet long. Peel it, rub it constantly with Oil of Abramelin (this, and his incense, from Wallis and Co., 26 New Cavendish Street, W.1) and keep wrapped in scarlet silk, constantly, I wrote, and meant it; rub it, when saying your mantra, to the rhythm of that same. (Remember, "A ka dua" is the best; ask me to intone it to you when you next visit me.)

That said, I do find his style hypnotic. Sinisterly avuncular.

That is extremely annoying to read.

I remember Magic Book 4 being my favorite. What did you get out of Thelema? That's his magnus opus, right? If you don't like that, then you should move on from Crowley. He's not the end all be all. If you read the ranks of the OTO especially I feel like it's obvious he's a bullshitter.

I don't think it's a stretch to say he liked to fuck. I've heard the OTO member call the OTO 'basically a sex cult'. And at the gnostic mass (at least the one near me) there's a naked woman and the entire ritual is meant to symbolize sex and maybe birth.

The moon child was a big deal for him, right

But you should think for yourself and read in between the lines. What's wrong with ritual magic? The moon child thing is a good example. Your state of mind has a big effect on your biology, especially if you were in a ritual trance during sex. It's pretty known that your state of mind at the time of conception affects your sex cells.

I'll cite that if you can't find it yourself. I may be stretching the tests slightly, but it's absolutely what I believe to be true, whether or not Crowley's particular ideas were right.

The expression of your genes change throughout your life via life experience. The goal of ritual 'magick' could only be to intentionally affect that experience - and in tern the expression of your genes, the sex cells they pass on - and this same in turn for the people you affect throughout your life, etc

Note I'm not stretching the tests in what I say, but in what I'm implying. There obviously haven't been tests for the affect of ritual magick on biology, epigenetics, and sex cells / your baby/ But there have been tests on for example mindfulness meditation leading to a decrease in telomere degeneration (aka an increase in dna longevity).

We've only scratched the surface of this kind of thing

All books are secondary to knowing. Reading a book without knowing what it's about is like reading gibberish.

Omnipotent by immanence, not by contract. As in you can do anything and everything but none of it will ever surpass or even come close to the Truth and Goodness of God, so everything refracting from God will collapse and return to God.

Holy shit, this is amazing. I thought this thread would have died by now, was not expecting to come back to this.

Bump for You

>That is extremely annoying to read.
W-why?

>This is the passage I was thinking of
Do you know much about the history of the text; who he's writing to, when, why, and what about?

This is dry mechanistic magic he's talking about. His advice for wands didn't change from Liber ABA to MWT, a gap of something like thirty years. Sometimes he DOES refer to the penis as a wand, but never when coupled with actual construction protocols. Abramelin oil is a sacramental oil in Thelema and the Abramelin operations (for attracting the Holy Guardian Angels). It's roughly based in the Holy Anointing Oil of the Bible.

The address is simply to someone who has a stock of decent oil.

AFAIK, these letters were written by the time, or either just shortly before, the birth of Ataturk and his development of ED. Cunt was the last thing on his mind at sixty plus. Even having Ataturk was mostly due to the loss of previous children.

>hypnotic
I agree.

>Avuncular
We don't call him Uncle Ed for nothing.

>What did you get out of Thelema? That's his magnus opus, right?
What do you want me to tell you? Mild success? Pussy? Bepis? Wisdom? Because that's all a thing, but none of that matters for shit compared to Apprehension and Execution of Will, and not in a Nietzschean power trip sense as is often construed (though I guess you're free to take it that direction, if you're a fag), the Thelemic concept of Will is much closer to pure Logos. Anyway I've been at it for like seventeen years or so. As noted in the previous thread I also have problems with Crowley but this is one of the better metaphilosophies to apply to mysticism in the West.

Liber ABA (Book 4) is formally his exemption thesis, which isn't quite the same as a magnum opus, though he probably considered it as such while writing it. I'd throw a couple more books in there too.

>Your state of mind has a big effect on your biology, especially if you were in a ritual trance during sex
This is the POINT of Tantra.

>I've heard the OTO member call the OTO 'basically a sex cult'.
Not all local bodies are that fun. ~t. OTO initiate

Thanks; surprised Veeky Forums doesn't know about the library. Post regular updates on /x/, irregular updates on Veeky Forums. The library spreads on /pol/ and Veeky Forums. Tried to host some lit threads like four years ago but you had some NASTY Thelema affiliated psueds that think you're trash if you don't keep a blog of your LBRP notes or whatever. Probably Guntherites.