Alpha & Omega

Gnosticism and Shamanism:Sacred Knowledge of Spiritual Knowing

2009-02-18T12:57:00.004-05:00

Gnosticism and Shamanism
Sacred Knowledge of Spiritual Knowing

Gnosis/Gnosticism
The original Greek word 'gnosis', is "to know" or knowledge in terms of being 'acquainted with' God. Gnosis therefore, is commonly referred to as the "direct knowledge of the divine mysteries". Gnosticism is an exploration of the spiritual and esoteric paths that encompasses many traditions of "knowing" the depth of the mysteries of our beingness. This knoweldge is based in deeper more sacred, inner spiritual truths derived from direct experience. Gnosis is the path of initiation into the Greater Mysteries and is the heart of all the great religions. In a specific religious sense is it the knowledge of God. Gnosis is the ultimate Revelation of knowing (versus reasoning) that is bestowed by the Divine -when God reveals hisself to man.

"Gnosis" and "Gnosticism" are almost always used interchangeably. The suggestion that term "gnosis" ought to be used to describe a state of consciousness, while "Gnosticism" should denote the Gnostic system..."Gnosticism...had surfaced in the twentieth century in the forms of Theosophy, Christian Science, some forms of spiritualism, and in what was called the "New Theology," which had been introduced primarily by German writers on religion." (1)

"...is not simply a synonym for mysticism, paranormal, occult, metaphysics, esoteric or knowledge. It is a distinct category of mystical experience beyond the physical or psychic levels of being. (Psychic experiences, such as speaking in tongues, are not considered to be an experience of gnosis."(2)

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*Carl Jung*

"Jung was not only interested in the Gnostics, but he considered them the discoverers and certainly the most important forerunners of depth psychology. The association between Jung's psychology and Gnosticism is profound, and its scope is increasingly revealed with the passage of time and the wider availability of the Nag Hammadi scriptures....What made Jung's view radically different from those of his predecessors was simply this: he believed that Gnostic teachings and myths originated in the personal psychospiritual experience of the Gnostic sages. What originates in the psyche bears the imprint of the psyche. Hence the close affinity between Gnosticism and depth psychology. (1)

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*Characteristics of Gnostics*

"The following characteristics may be considered normative for all Gnostic teachers and groups in the era of classical Gnosticism; thus one who adheres to some or all of them today might properly be called a Gnostic:

*The Gnostics posited an original spiritual unity that came to be split into a plurality.

*As a result of the precosmic division the universe was created. This was done by a leader possessing inferior spiritual powers and who often resembled the Old Testament Jehovah.

*A female emanation of God was involved in the cosmic creation (albeit in a much more positive role than the leader).

*In the cosmos, space and time have a malevolent character and may be personified as demonic beings separating man from God.

*For man, the universe is a vast prison. He is enslaved both by the physical laws of nature and by such moral laws as the Mosaic code.

*Mankind may be personified as Adam, who lies in the deep sleep of ignorance, his powers of spiritual self-awareness stupefied by materiality.

*Within each natural man is an "inner man," a fallen spark of the divine substance. Since this exists in each man, we have the possibility of awakening from our stupefaction.

*What effects the awakening is not obedience, faith, or good works, but knowledge.

*Before the awakening, men undergo troubled dreams.

*Man does not attain the knowledge that awakens him from these dreams by cognition but through revelatory experience, and this knowledge is not information but a modification of the sensate being.

*The awakening (i.e., the salvation) of any individual is a cosmic event.

*Since the effort is to restore the wholeness and unity of the Godhead, active rebellion against the moral law of the Old Testament is enjoined upon every man." (1)

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Shamanism
Shamanism has survived since, virtually, the dawn of time, when man was given responsibility over the earth. Our ancestors in previous cultures throughout the world came up with common symbols, images, stories, ideals and "code of ethics". This sometimes has been linked to the 'world consciousness' or in Jung's term, the "collective unconscious".

There seems to be a common knowledge that is always there if we are receptive to it. Shamanism in it's various forms seems to be the cornerstone of most world religions. If we look at the traits of shamanistic behavior: prayers, chants, drumming, astral traveling, dimensional traveling and spirit walking-talking. We'll find that the truth in alternate realities is earned by hard work, study and perserverance.

Shamanism is merely a path that opens for the person that chooses to walk their spirituality of "knowing". This knowledge is not gained from literature or ancient scriptures. This knowledge is discovered and bestowed upon the person by The Great Mystery, Divine Powers, Gods, Goddesses and the various names of the divinic forces.

Shamans of today help on many levels. The term can become blurry in all the spiritual terminology of today, however, the gnosis of this path comes as experience. Regardless of culture, shamanic paths are very similar. It is a path of knowing how to listen and sense the invisible energies around us. All of nature is speaking the invisible language of the shaman, everything is connected to everything else, there are many worlds, dimensions and levels at which one can operate in, the spirit worlds are as real as this world and there is no death, just transformation. It is my opinion, that people whose souls are called to this path "know it".

It is time for those who are called to awaken to the "collective unconscious" and use the knowledge they have "studied" for as a guardian of nature, soul-healer and uniting the planet. This inner truth comes to light as one progresses along the journey. This is Gnosis. The saying as if Spirit or Jesus or Buddha is speaking, "I never said it would be easy, I only told you it would be worth it.", seems to be the hallmark of a shamanic life. Those who follow their soul's calling listen and may not fully understand the ways of the Spirit, but we trust and listen and do what we are told, in this world or another. And sometimes, upon trusting the shaman's heart, by great faith and lasting patience, we are given great treasures.

Shamanism connects us to the consciousness of another by raising our comprehension of the connection that is between man, nature and the universe and the role we each play within the Divine Cosmos. Our ancestors knew this consciousness in all things: in animals, plants, rocks, trees, mountains, rivers and all the elements.

Many today are remembering the language of what the ancestors still teach. To speak the language of All Things is the mission of many shamanic healers. To sing the song of water, to hear the whispering of the wind, and to feel the love the earth has for us and all humans..is the language of the heart. This is true gnosis.

Love and Light and Many Blessings,
StarStuffs

http://www.starstuffs.com

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References:

Gnosis
(1) http://www.gnosis.org/whatisgnostic.htm
(2) http://www.faqs.org/faqs/gnosis/overview/

Gnostic Parallels-Writings of Carlos Castaneda

2009-02-09T15:11:00.001-05:00

Gnostic Parallels in the Writings of Carlos Castaneda French version published on Karmapolisbe.

      The eleven books of Carlos Castaneda record his apprenticeship with a Yaqui Indian, don Juan Matus, who plays Socratic mentor to Castaneda’s skeptical anthropologist. Over more than twenty years, Castaneda learned the theory and practice of a new discipline proposed by his mischievous and demanding teacher. The art of the “new seers” involves revising ancient secrets of Toltec sorcery transmitted to don Juan through a late lineage dating from the 18th century.

“Sorcery” in this case means a path of experience that stands apart from the experiential habits of humanity (French sortir, “to leave, depart”).

      Through a long process of trial and error, Castaneda manages to alter the parameters of perception and explore other worlds. In the process of his adventures, he encounters certain alien inorganic beings who present an obstacle or test for the shaman. In Magical Passes, Castaneda wrote: “Human beings are on a journey of awareness, which has momentarily been interrupted by extraneous forces.”

Mud Shadows
      In Castaneda’s final book, The Active Side of Infinity (1998), don Juan challenges Castaneda to reconcile man’s intelligence, demonstrated in so many achievements, with “the stupidity of his systems of beliefs... the stupidity of his contradictory behaviour.” Don Juan relates this blatant contradiction in human intelligence to what he calls “the topic of topics,” “the most serious topic in sorcery.” This topic is predation.
       To the horrified astonishment of his apprentice, the elder sorcerer explains how the human mind has been infiltrated by an alien intelligence:
      We have a predator that came from the depths of the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives. Human beings are its prisoners. The predator is our lord and master. It has rendered us docile, helpless. If we want to protest, it suppresses our protest. If we want to act independently, it demands that we don’t do so...
      Sorcerers believe that the predators have given us our systems of beliefs, our ideas of good and evil, our social mores. They are the ones who set up our hopes and expectations and dreams of success or failure. They have given us covetousness, greed and cowardice. It is the predators who make us complacent, routinary and egomaniacal.

      According to don Juan, the sorcerers of ancient Mexico called the predator the flyer (italicised by Castaneda) “because it leaps through the air... It is a big shadow, impenetrably black, a black shadow that jumps through the air.” This description matches thousands of accounts of the bizarre jumping movements, sometimes sideways, executed by alien Greys who accost people at random. Fleeting black shadows are less often reported, but they play the major role in the long and detailed report of alien activity by John Keel, The Mothman Prophecies.

      Gnostic writings contain descriptions of alien predators called Archons, Arkontai in Greek. The texts from Nag Hammadi describe them as heavy, elusive, shadowy creatures. The most common name for them is “beings of the likeness, shadow-creatures.” Could the Archons be compared to the “mud shadows” described by don Juan? This question raises the general issue of parallels between don Juan’s Central American Toltec shamanism and the shamanism of the Mystery Schools of ancient Europe. Let’s consider some of these parallels.

      First, there is the matter of the influence of the predators or flyers on humanity. In The Active Side of Infinity, Don Juan tells Castaneda that “the predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind.” This alarming statement suggests an immediate parallel to Gnostic teachings. Gnostics, who directed the Mystery Schools of the Near East in antiquity, taught that the true mind of human beings, nous authenticos, is part of the cosmic intelligence that pervades nature, but due to the intrusion of the Archons, this “native mind” or "native genius" can be subverted and even occupied by another mind. They warned that the Archons invade the human psyche, they intrude mentally and psychologically, although they may also confront us physically as well. Their main impact, however, is in our mental syntax, in our paradigms and beliefs, exactly as don Juan says of the flyers.

      Don Juan tells Castaneda that the predator’s mind is “a cheap model: economy strength, one size fits all.” This description fits the hive-mentality of the Archons. Sorcerers call this uniform alien mind “the foreign installation, which exists in you and in every other human being.” The foreign installation (italicized by Castaneda) pulls us out of our syntax. It deranges our indigenous abilities to organize the world according to the language proper to our species. The role of correct syntax in the sorcerer’s mastery of intent is one of the central factors in the later teachings of Don Juan. The sorcerer's concern for deviation of syntax, and consequent derouting of intent, parallels the importance of language and correct definition emphasized in Gnostic teaching.

      Don Juan makes a number of statements pertinent to strategies against alien intrusion. He says that the sorcerers of ancient times “found out that if they taxed the flyers’ mind with inner silence, the foreign installation would flee, giving to any one of the practitioners involved in this maneouver the total certainty of the mind’s foreign origin.” In other words, the realization that another mind can operate in our minds only becomes fully clear and certain when the foreign mind has been exposed and expelled. Only then do we understand how “the real mind that belongs to us, the sum total of our experience, after a lifetime of domination has been rendered shy, insecure and shifty.” The “real mind” of Castaneda can be equated to the nous authenticos of the Gnostics. The main effect of the flyers upon our mind is seen in mental conditioning, brainwashing. This is also the main effect of Archontic intrusion.

Psychic Self-Defence
      Gnostic texts describe direct, physical confrontations with Archons of two kinds, an embryonic or foetal type—hence, the Greys of modern UFO lore—and a reptilian type. The usual tactic of the Greys is first to stun and then infiltrate the mind of the human subject. In the First Apocalypse of James, the Gnostic master instructs a student in how to confront the Archons. These predatory entities are said to “abduct souls by night,” a precise description of modern ET abductions. The adept in the Mysteries learns to repel the Archons with magical formulas (mantras) and magical passes or gestures of power (mudras). In some texts, the encounter with the Archons is structured according to the system of “planetary spheres.” The adept who practices astral projection, lucid dreaming or “manipulations of the double” (as in Castaneda) is said to face the Archons in a kind of computer-game maze of seven levels, corresponding to the seven planets. At each level, the adept is unable to continue unless he confronts the “gatekeepers,” using magical passes and words.

For more on confronting Archons, see A Gnostic Catechism.

      The archetypal format of the “journey through the planetary spheres” was well-known in antiquity, particularly in schools of Hermetics and Kaballa. In Tantra Vidya, O. M. Hinze compares the Gnostic ascent through the seven spheres with the raising of kundalini through the seven chakras in Indian yogic traditions. Don Juan does not use the seven-level scheme, but his description of the flyers can be fitted into that scheme. The correlation works especially well if we equate the “serpent worship” of certain Gnostic cults with Kundalini yoga practice, which may in turn be equated with "the fire from within” and the Plumed Serpent in several Castaneda books. In short, the Toltec sorcerers would also have been adepts of Kundalini yoga, cultivating “the fire from within.” Their encounters with the flyers might not have been formalized into a seven-level test-game, but the same experiences are indicated in all three instances: Toltec, yogic, and Gnostic.

      Gnostics believed that the force of Kundalini, or the ambient field generated by that force, served as protection from the Archons.

      On the use of Kundalini to repel alien intrusion, see Kundalini and the Alien Force.

      The human character-traits attributed by don Juan to deviation by the foreign installation are identical to those ascribed to the Archons in Gnostic writings: envy (covetousness) and arrogance (egomania) are said to be their primary features, while their behaviour demonstrates that they are mindless drones (routinary), greedy for power over us and too cowardly to come out in the open and reveal themselves.

      It would be misleading to make Don Juan’s revelations comply in a strict and literal way with Gnostic teachings, but these initial parallels are striking, and there is much more. Here is an outstanding instance where indigenous wisdom from the Americas tallies with the esoteric teachings of a long-lost spiritual tradition in the Near East. The Toltec-Gnostic parallel may seem remote and improbable at first sight. But if we assume that shamanic experience is consistent and empirical (i.e., it can be tested by experience), it would not be surprising to find consistent reports in widely separate traditions.

The Foreign Installation
      The idea of a foreign installation is extremely instructive. It immediately recalls metallic or crystalline implants said to be used by the Greys (and their human accomplices) to track human subjects. In another, less technological sense, it suggests an ideological virus implanted in our minds by non-human entities. According to the Gnostic critique of Christianity, salvationist ideology in its Judeo-Christian form (i.e., belief in a divine redeemer and a final apocalypse) is just such a virus. It is something implanted in the human mind by alien forces. The Gnostic emphasis on Judeo-Christianity (which can now be extended to Islam) gives a strategic advantage in the detection of alien influences, because the patriarchal/Salvationist religions have dominated the historical narrative on our planet. This dominance is symptomatic of Archontic deviance, Gnostics said.

      The alien mind penetrates into our story-telling activity, the narrative power so crucial for humanity to make its way in the cosmos. This is one of the ways, or the most effective way, that we are deviated from our proper course of evolution. For the human species, the capacity to achieve intent depends on developing plots, stories, narratives that can guide us from initial conception to final goal.

      Human purpose is manifold, and so the manner in which we are being deviated is likely to be multifarious. In the immense complexity of intrusion, clarity and concentration are indispensible assets. In a startling remark, Don Juan asserts that “the flyers’ mind has no concentration whatsoever.” This remark recalls the Gnostic assertion that the Archons have no ennoia, no will of their own, no intentionality. Concentration might be defined as the coordination of attention and intention. To concentrate is to bring a certain depth of attention (Bythos) to intent (Ennoia). In Gnostic teachings, Bythos and Ennoia are cosmic deities or principles of the Pleroma, the Wholeness, and they are also attributes of the human mind. They are symbolized as two spheres. To concentrate is to bring the two spheres together at a single, unifying point, a common center. We do this constantly when we focus our attention upon a certain intention or goal, but the Archons are incapable of anything like this because they have “no concentration whatsoever.” They have no concentrating power, no innate faculty that would unite intention with attention. Human resistence to their intrusion depends on inner composure and mental discipline, the sobriety of the warrior. Don Juan’s counsels on the warrior’s tests with the flyers seem to present a Toltec version of Gnostic strategies for resisting the Archons.

Common Points
      Upon close examination, the teachings of Don Juan, developed in nine books by Carlos Castaneda from 1968 to 1998, contain numerous distinct parallels with Gnostic instruction. The new sorcery introduced by Castaneda is an extension and make-over of traditional knowledge of the “old seers” of the Toltec tradition of ancient Mexico. It differs from the old sorcery largely in its lack of concern for intricate power-games, feuds, sinister pacts with non-human powers, and control over others. Its aim is freedom for the spiritual warrior, rather than control over anyone or anything. Both in Toltec and Gnostic terms, the ultimate liberation for humanity may come through facing the alien predators. They are not here to advance or assist us, but in confronting and overcoming them we may gain a vital boost toward another level of consciousness.
Some points of commonality between Gnosticism and the Toltec-derived neo-shamanism of Castaneda are:

      1, the Toltec exposure of an alien mind or foreign installation that makes us less and other than we humanly are: comparable to the Gnostic idea of a dehumanizing ideological virus implanted in our minds by the Alien/Archons.

      2, the importance for the sorcerer of mastering intent: comparable to Gnostic emphasis on ennoia, intentionality, which aligns us with the Gods and elevates us above the Archons.

      3, Castaneda’s emphasis on syntax (correct attributions, and the use of mental command signals for directing intent): comparable to Gnostic teaching on ennoia, mental clarity, and correct attribution ( right use of definitions).

      4, the Toltec assertion that predation is “the topic of topics”: comparable to the Gnostic emphasis on the intrusion of the Archons. Facing intrusion is essential, because if we cannot see how we are deviated, we cannot find our true path in the cosmos.

      5, the work with lucid dreaming, astral travel, projection of the double, in Gnostic circles and the Mystery Schools: comparable to many episodes in Castaneda.

      6, the Toltec model of great bands of emanations that pervade the universe: comparable to the emanations or streamings from the Pleroma described in Mystery School revelation texts.

      7, the Toltec distinction between organic and inorganic beings: comparable to the distinction between humans and Archons in Gnostic cosmology.

      8, the Toltec exploration of other worlds and dimensions through the practice of non-ordinary awareness: comparable to age-old shamanic practices of the Mystery Schools.

      9, Don Juan’s description of the “luminous egg”: comparable to the oval of clear light in Gnostic revelation texts and the augoeides or "auric egg" of the Mysteries.

      10, the Toltec figure of the Eagle, a primary metaphor in Castaneda: comparable to the same figure in the Nag Hammadi Codices where the instructing voice of sacred mind, perhaps equivalent to Castaneda’s “voice of seeing,” states: “I appeared in the form of an Eagle on the Tree of Knowledge, the primal knowing that arises in the pure light, that I might teach them and awaken them out of the depth of sleep” (The Apocryphon of John, 23.25-30).

      11, the organization of the sorcerer’s party into eight pairs of male and female sorcerers: comparable to the organization of the Mystery cells into sixteen members, eight of each sex. (Artifactual evidence: Orphic Serpent bowl, and Pietroasa bowl.
See A Sheaf of Cut Wheat)

      12, the cultivation of the fire from within, Kundalini, or the Plumed Serpent of the Toltecs: comparable to the Winged Serpent and divine Instructor of the Gnostics.

      13, the mechanism of the assemblage point.

      It would take an entire book to develop these parallels at length. Three factors out of the ten are of particular importance. These factors are the luminous egg, the great bands of emanations, and the role of certain inorganic beings as allies.

The Assemblage Point
      Among the many strange features in the teachings of don Juan, the matter of the assemblage point is certainly one of the most baffling. In several books we are told that the luminous egg surrounding a human being is attached to the physical body by an odd mechanism called the assemblage point. The location of the point is high behind the right shoulder. Apparently, at that point in the body, the luminous egg exerts a kind of pressure, forming a dimple or depression. As long as the force of the egg stays in the dimple, the assemblage point is stable and the human being perceives reality in a predetermined way. By shifting the assemblage point, sorcerers are able to change their perception of reality, or actually deconstruct and reconstruct reality at will.

      Don Juan’s instructions regarding the assemblage point are as baffling as they are fascinating, and far from clear. The dynamics of sliding or shifting the mechanism are difficult to understand, and even harder to visualize. Moreover, it seems that the assemblage point is a weird item, not comparable to anything found in any other sources.

      There is, however, a rare piece of testimony from the Mysteries that describes the assemblage point in exactly the manner found in Castaneda.

      In The Subtle Body in Western Tradition, Gnostic scholar G. R. S. Mead cites the lost writings of Isadorus, the husband of Hypatia and one of the last Gnostics who taught at the Mystery School (the Museum) in Alexandria. Isadorus’ original work is lost, but it was paraphrased by another writer, Damascius, so a few faint indications of his teachings can be surmised. Isadorus is said to have described the augoeides, “golden aura,” comparable to the luminous egg of Castandea. The nature and operation of the augoiedes, also called the auric egg, was one of the deepest secrets of the Mysteries. Apparently, a lost treatise of Isadorus stated that the augoeides surrounds the human being like an oval membrane, in such a way that the physical body floats in the oval. This is precisely how Castaneda describes the luminous egg. The Gnostic teacher also said that the luminous oval is connected or locked into the physical body at a point in the back, high up on the right shoulder blade.

      Thus, one of the weirdest details in Castaneda’s writings is confirmed by a teacher of the Mysteries who lived in Alexandria the 5th century CE.

A Cosmic Test
      In the classical scheme of the planetary system, there are seven planets, not including the earth: sun, moon, mercury, venus, mars, jupiter, saturn. (The sun is not of course a planet, but a star, the central body of the planetary system, and the moon is a satellite of the earth. In some ancient systems, these two bodies are excluded from the seven and replaced by the lunar nodes.) This situation recalls Castaneda’s description of the organic and inorganic structure of the "great bands of emanation” that compose the universe. If we set the earth apart from the other planets, the “seven inorganic bands” could well be correlated to the “seven planets,” known to be realms that do not support organic life as the Earth does. Gnostics taught that the earth does not belong to the planetary system, but is merely captured in it. They called the planetary system apart from earth the Hebdomad , the Sevenfold. This terminology may be compared to the Gnostic description of the realm of the Archons, who are inorganic beings. The “seven inorganic bands” in Castaneda’s scheme may be different language for the same model.

      Gnostic seers located the habitat of the predatory Archons in the planetary system, exclusive of the Earth. The Archontic realm would then be assembled from the seven inorganic bands. Within the domain so assembled, the Archons would be on their own “turf.” Their presence in the world assembled around us, the biosphere ruled by the laws of organic chemistry, would be an intrusion. Nowhere does Castaneda indicate that the predatory entities come from these seven bands, but the conclusion is obvious. He does say explicitly that the flyers are inorganic beings, so the conclusion is not only obvious but consistent with his syntax, his system of description.

      Don Juan specifies that sorcerers can and usually do initiate contact with inorganic beings. They do this by shifting the assemblage point and crossing into the unknown territory of other bands, or sliding into unknown regions of our own band. A great deal of the activity described in Castaneda’s work consists of forays into the other worlds contingent to ours. “Once the barrier is broken, inorganic beings change and become what seers call allies.” These allies can be deviating or even deadly, but mastering them is one of the primary tasks of the new sorcery. There are numerous allies in the cosmos at large. According to many indigenous traditions, earth is visited by many kinds of other-dimensional beings who serve as allies and guides to humanity. The dark, shadowy predator would seem to be a unique category of inorganic beings who is perhaps not an ally at all, or else a particularly difficult ally to master.

      Don Juan stressed the need to confront this inorganic being to experience “the total certainty of the mind’s foreign origin.” The “predator that came from the depths of the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives” may certainly be equated to the Archons of Gnostic teachings. Don Juan describes Alien intrusion and its main consequence, behavioural modification, in a most vivid manner. The old sorcerer also makes a striking comment on what might be gained from our encounter with these entities. “The flyers are an essential part of the universe… and they must be taken as what they really are — awesome, monstrous. They are the means by which the universe tests us.”

      The parallels between Gnostic materials and the new Toltec sorcery of Carlos Castaneda are striking and present sobering insights on the human condition, if nothing else. What can we do about the topic of topics, predation? “All we can do is discipline ourselves to the point where they will not touch us,” Don Juan advises. Significantly, he says will not, not can not. He also says that the alien predators are the way the universe tests us, as just noted. It follows that the intent to arrange our minds and lives so that the flyers/Archons are not willing to intrude on us is the capital exercise, the primary test in progress for humanity.

JL: June 2005
[Originally written September 2000 for MS “Lord of the Clones,” 4th draft.
The French and English versions on Karmapolis. be differ slightly.]

The Story of the Dead Sea Scrolls

2009-02-04T10:50:00.001-05:00

The Story of the Dead Sea Scrolls

The story of the Dead Sea Scrolls begins in 1947, when – so the tale goes – a Bedouin shepherd found a collection of apparently ancient scrolls in a cave above Khirbet Qumran, near the north end of the Dead Sea. Over the course of the next year, seven scrolls from the cave reached scholarly hands. When examined by experts, the importance and antiquity of the find was quickly understood. For starters, included among these first seven scrolls was a fairly well-preserved copy of the biblical book of Isaiah, soon determined to be the oldest complete manuscript of a Hebrew scripture yet discovered and dating to before 100 BCE.

Another of the seven scrolls was of a more curious nature. Now named by researchers the “Community Rule” (it was first translated and published under the title "Manual of Discipline"), this large and fairly compete manuscript represented a type of Jewish religious writing previously unknown. It appeared to be a document related to the conduct and beliefs held within a sectarian Jewish community sometime between 150 BCE. and 70 CE. – a community seemingly very much like the Essenes described in antiquity by the Jewish historian Josephus.

In 1949 a team lead by Roland de Vaux (an academic and Dominican priest who would dominate Dead Sea Scroll studies for the next two decades) surveyed the cave at Qumran where the scrolls had been found, discovering pottery shards and several more manuscript fragments. Two years later de Vaux directed archeological excavation of the Khirbet Qumran ruins located just below the cave. Between 1952 and 1956 ten additional caves containing scroll fragments were discovered near Qumran, almost all located by Bedouins who made a business of scouring through the area. The most impressive cache – discovered again by Bedouins working on at Qumran after de Vaux's 1952 expedition – was located in a man-made cave less than 200 yards from Khirbet Qumran. Named "Cave 4" (in order of its discovery), it contained about 15,000 scroll fragments, identified eventually as the remains of 574 separate manuscripts.

Early in this period of discovery an hypothesis about the source and authors of the scrolls had formed in the minds of de Vaux and his associates. In retrospect, it was only a working hypothesis. But it became a story fixed in history. Faced with several pieces of a puzzle – ancient Hebrew scrolls stored in a cave, a manuscript among those scrolls tentatively identified as the rule of an Essene community, and the ruins of an ancient community's dwelling directly below the cave – de Vaux fit the puzzle’s pieces into a temptingly obvious picture: The Dead Sea Scrolls were the library of an Essene community that once occupied the ruins at Khirbet Qumran. Details disclosed from early excavations at Khirbet Qumran all worked neatly into the story: the ruins contained a large room that would have been a scriptorium (a term previously used to describe rooms in medieval monasteries); remnants of long tables were found that could have served for copying lengthy scrolls; and three ink wells were found.

The "Qumran Hypothesis" – attributing the origins and authorship of the scrolls to an Essene community at Khirbet Qumran, a theory perhaps more accurately called the "Qumran-Essene dogma" – became a party line in Dead Sea Scrolls studies for the next 40 years. The integrity of this thesis was buttressed by highly restricted access to the scrolls. Manuscripts were parceled out for study and translation to a small clique of academics, directed by de Vaux.

In 1955, literary critic Edmund Wilson published an influential series of articles in The New Yorker magazine (later release in book form) which help cement in popular imagination this accepted story of the Dead Sea Scrolls and their creators, the Essenes who dwelt at Khirbet Qumran. Indeed, Wilson took the tale a tantalizing step further, fleshing out the possibility (broached in 1950 by the French academic André Dupont-Sommer) that the first Christians may have borrowed ideas from the people of the Scrolls. Similar to the first Christians, Wilson explained, the Essenes at Qumran had honored an anointed Teacher of Righteousness, performed ritual washings or "baptisms", and shared a sacred meal. Popular interest in the Scrolls has continued ever since to be stimulated by conjectured links between the Qumran scrolls and early Christianity.

Reconsidering the Essene-Qumran Hypothesis

In the last two decades of the twentieth century, several objections to the Qumran-Essene thesis of the Scrolls' origins were voiced within the academic community. Even louder objections arose over continued refusal of the Dead Sea Scrolls "team" to allow all qualified scholars open access to unpublished materials in the collection. After forty years, Scrolls research remained the exclusive domain of a small, self-selected team of scholars. Worse still, over several decades the group had made woefully little progress publishing material from the collection, particularly the large cache of scroll fragments discovered in Cave 4. The whole project was becoming an academic scandal, intermittently punctuated by conspiracy theories suggesting occult purposes motivating sequestration of the yet unpublished materials.

Whatever its various motives, the monopoly on access to the Dead Sea Scrolls collection came to an end in 1991 when the Huntington Library announced it would make available without restriction a complete microfilm copy of the Scrolls in its archives. Soon after, Emanuel Tov, director of the Scrolls project, announced open access and right of publication would be granted to all material in the official collection.

During the last decade, the pace of DSS publication has picked up considerably. So, too, has disagreement about the Scrolls' origins and authorship. Dr. Norman Golb (Professor of Jewish History and Civilization, University of Chicago) has been among the most vociferous opponents to the classic story of the Scrolls' origins. Many of his objections, summarized in his 1995 book, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?, seem to be receiving some wider accord.

The "Qumran-Essene dogma" was originally developed to explain a relatively small number of newly discovered documents, including texts in a previously unknown literary style that apparently represented a divergent, "sectarian" voice within Judaism. Early studies of the DSS identified this voice as Essene, and viewed the Scrolls as a remnant of the sect's library. As the numbers and kinds of scrolls discovered multiplied however, critics argued that the probability all these manuscripts had been collected, copied, and archived by a single Essene community living at Qumran dwindled. Over 800 distinct documents have been identified among the scroll fragments found in the caves of the Judean desert. A large number of these are previously unknown works written in several styles. Hundreds of different scribal hands are found in the manuscripts, including fragments in Greek script. In addition, as Dr. Golb argues, the collection is almost devoid of the type of "historical autographs" – works in an author's own hand, such as personal and official letters, lists of names, inventories, deeds of ownership – that might link a cache of documents with a specific source community. Objective archeological scrutiny of the Qumran site also suggests it may have functioned in ancient times as a military fortress, and not principally or exclusively as a religious and scribal commune. Persuaded by such arguments, several scholars have completely rejected the traditional "story of the Dead Sea Scrolls".

Which brings us back to the questions asked by DSS researchers fifty years ago: Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, and who stored them in the caves? At present, there is no generally accepted answer to either question. Some scholars now argue that the scrolls possibly came from one or more ancient Jewish collections, including the Temple library in Jerusalem. They were copied by many different hands and represent several types of Jewish literature produced in the intertestamental period, including some apocalyptic and sectarian writings authored by communities that might be called "Essenes". During the Jewish uprising and before destruction of Temple in 70 CE. – so goes this tentative argument – they were transported to the caves around Qumran for safety. Despite such arguments (and they remain arguments, not proofs), many highly reputable scholars continue to affirm that an Essene community existed at Qumran and produced or collected many of the documents we call the Dead Sea Scrolls.

What do the Dead Sea Scrolls Say?

2009-02-04T10:34:00.002-05:00

What do the Dead Sea Scrolls Say?
Why are They Important?

The question often asked by casual readers is simply, "What do the Dead Sea Scrolls say?" Again, there is no one answer to that question.
The texts are diverse, they apparently do not speak with a single voice, or from a single viewpoint. Most of the manuscripts found are heavily damaged fragments of scrolls, some very tentatively pieced together. Often the preserved scraps give only glimpses of what existed in the original text.

Readers approach the Dead Sea scrolls from a variety of perspectives and with differing interests. The texts "say" different things to different people. For students of Hebrew literature, the biblical texts and commentaries preserved in the DSS collection offer the opportunity for textual research using early and previously unknown source documents. Experts in paleography find in the Scrolls material for analysis of developing and changing Hebrew writing styles. Specialists in the history of Judaism find documents in the collection that shed new light on the diverse and heterodox trends present in Judaism during the intertestamental period. Students of Christian origins see in the texts evidences of the apocalyptic, messianic foment from which Christianity arose.
While the DSS certainly do offer insights into the Jewish cultural milieu that gave formation to Christianity, there is probably nothing in the Scrolls collection directly reflecting events or personages known to early Christian history.

After fifty years, it is still difficult to say how future scholarship will judge the importance of the DSS discovery. Several individuals now suggest the Scrolls are globally less important than implied by decades of relentless publicity. Consider the balancing and sobering appraisal given by Dr. Eliezer Segal (Professor of Religious Studies, University of Calgary) in his 1994 article titled "The Dead Sea Scrolls Dud":

Coming from someone who makes his living from the study of ancient Jewish texts, it might surprise some readers when I declare my conviction that the Dead Sea Scrolls are not all that important, and that their impact has been inflated out of all proportion by the media and various interested parties.

The intense public fascination with the Qumran scrolls was fueled by the expectation that documents contemporary with the beginnings of Christianity would provide valuable–or even revolutionary–new insights into the origin of that religion.
The Christian scholars who controlled much of the research into the scrolls made every effort to uncover allusions to Christian concerns, and tiny fragments were fancifully pieced together so as to produce theological statements about divine or suffering messiahs. The archeological site at Qumran was even described as if it had housed a medieval European monastery.

These dubious conclusions have been utilized both as confirmation of Christian tradition and as refutations of its uniqueness or originality. Either way, they succeeded in transforming the esoteric world of Dead Sea Scroll scholarship into a lucrative industry whose potential market included much of the Christian world.

Not surprisingly, almost none of these alleged Christian links find factual support in the evidence of the scrolls. The simple truth is that the scrolls contain a representative sample of the diverse literature that Jews were producing during the latter part of the Second Temple Era, a time marked by factionalism and ferment in the Jewish community of Eretz Yisrael. As such, they reflect typical Jewish concerns, most notably in the area of halakhah, Jewish religious law, which, then as today, ignited the most virulent controversies between competing sects. These simple and obvious facts rarely get mentioned in the popular representations of the scrolls.

The scrolls do enrich our knowledge of a very complex time in Jewish history, though much of this knowledge is of value only to scholarly specialists, and even their more substantial contributions (in such areas as the development of the Hebrew language and Jewish legal exegesis) are unlikely to sell a lot of newspaper tabloids or TV sponsorships. (JFP, Aug. 25 1994, p.9 – text available online)

Popular interest in the Scrolls has been manipulated by suggestions – encouraged by at least some of those who once controlled DSS research – that the discovery would shed a startling new light on the origins of Christianity. Of course, the original hypothesis about the Scrolls and the Qumran community appeared replete with just such promising possibilities for Christian-focused scholarship. Dr. Theodore H. Gaster (Columbia University) expressed the tenor of such scholarship in his 1957 publication Dead Sea Scriptures, explaining to readers that the Dead Sea Scrolls "furnish a picture of the religious and cultural climate in which John the Baptist conducted his mission and in which Jesus was initially reared...and whose religious ideas served largely as the seedbed of the New Testament." Many Jewish scholars have rightfully resented this focus and bias.

Having spent many years studying early Christian history in light of the Nag Hammadi texts (the "other" collection of ancient religious manuscripts discovered contemporaneously with the Dead Sea Scrolls), it has always seemed ironic to me that the Scrolls attracted so much of this kind of publicity, while so given to the Nag Hammadi materials. Fifty years after their discovery, however, a more balanced perspective is developing towards both sets of documents: The Nag Hammadi library is attracting increased interest, while once inflated expectations about the Dead Sea Scrolls are being properly moderated.

– Lance S. Owens

The Dead Sea
Scrolls Collection at The Gnostic Society Library

The Goal of Gnostic Christianity

2009-01-03T00:41:00.002-05:00

Goal of Gnostic Christianity

The key to understanding the goal of Jesus' ministry is to first know how he uses the Greek term logos. Jesus does not use logos in the sense of the statement or the "word" of God recorded in the Bible. Logos, for Jesus, refers to divine logic/reason of God, in man. This definition is Hellenized Judaism's adaptation of the classical Greek concept of logos as "world soul" (274) meaning the mind of God.

"If one thinks in OT terms, one would prefer to translate logos by word; if one thinks in the Greek terms, as the apologists [Gnostics] did on the whole, then one would translate logos into 'reason'." (275) "The logos stood for more than spoken words. The extent of the concept was that behind spoken words were thoughts. Thoughts were mind. Mind had affinity with reason. Reason was the structure of orderly action…that ultimate reality was reasonable, was in fact reason itself." (276) And because human beings have the capacity to reason, it was believed by Jesus and Gnostic Christians that our destiny is to "make contact with divine reason and, like God, discern ultimate truths." (277) (Note: See page 547A in The Interpreters One Volume Commentary on the Bible.)

"Logos also means man's ability to recognize reality; we would call it 'theoretical reason'. It is man's ability to reason." (278)

The author of The Wisdom of Solomon, "became the first to achieve some kind of rapprochement [meaning the renewal of friendly relations] between those two great cultures…the Greek and the Hebrew. Philo Jedaeus would later follow in his footsteps, and so would the Alexandrian [Egypt] church fathers, Clement and Origen, and to a greater or lesser degree, most of the great thinkers of the Christian church… In the NT itself, one can see the movement taking place, particularly in the letters of Paul…" (279)

What is this great movement? It is attempts at the reconciliation of the Jewish concept of wisdom/logos with that of the Logos in Greek philosophy. "The remarkable description of wisdom in [Ws ch7: 22-23], is made up of terms borrowed in large part from Greek, especially Stoic, philosophy. [Stoics thought of "the word as emanated by Logos as an intelligent principle". (280) Obviously, the author wishes to show that "whatever word might be used to describe such Greek philosophical concepts as the logos, or world soul, might also be used to characterize the biblical concept of wisdom." (281)

Jesus' Christ/logos teachings bring a new element to the debate between Jewish and Greek philosophy. For all the reasons given above, Jesus' contribution of nonjudgmental logic, when added to Aristotle's judgmental system of logic, will expand our consciousness. And we will, because of our renewed thought process, process ideas with the same wisdom/logos as does God.

Justin Martyr, for example, maintained that Christianity "is the true philosophy better than anything the Greeks produced. He used the Greek term logos (word) for Christ and explained that this meant both the word [logic] of [Jesus'] revelation and true reason in philosophy. Thus he sought to bring together the truth of Christian revelation [meaning Jesus' logic teachings] and the wisdom of Greek philosophy [meaning Aristotelian logic]." (282)

"Plato had set a theme by picturing the Ideas of God as the patterns on which all things were formed; the Stoics had combined these Ideas into the Logos of Spermatikos or fertilizing wisdom of God; the Neo-Pythagoreans had made the Ideas a divine person; and Philo had turned them into the Logos or Reason of God, a second divine principle, through which God created, and communicated with, the world. If we retain the famous exordium of the Fourth Gospel with all this in mind, and retain the Logos of the Greek original in place of the translation Word, we perceive at once that John has joined the philosophers." (283)

"In the beginning was the Logos [divine reason]; the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God…All things were made by the Logos; without him [him is the masculine pronoun of Logos] nothing was made that was made. It was by him [the Logos or divine reason of God] that all things came into existence… So the Logos [logic of God, not Jesus] became flesh and blood [first in Jesus, but later in all mankind] and dwelt amongst us." (Jn 1:1-5)

Most think that it is blasphemous to believe that human beings can be like God. Jesus, however, teaches the opposite. The Logos/reason of God is in us, and that our purpose is to, like Jesus, elevate our reasoning to the level of God's Logos. Understanding this makes it easy to understand Jesus' goal. Namely that all mankind has the power to reason like God. In fact, like Jesus, we all are one in God.

The goal of Gnostic Christianity then is to raise consciousness by elevating the rational element of consciousness to the same level as the logos, again meaning the logic or reasoning of God. This goal is achieved when we understand a new theory of human nature that Jesus revealed because that theory justifies nonjudgmental rules of logic that empower us to reason in ways that are comparable to that of the logos of God. With that godlike potential for reasoning, we will expand the context in which we think and become conscious in a nonjudgmental and loving, godlike way. This is what Paul means by "we [meaning Gnostic Christians] are those who have the mind of Christ." (1Co 2:16 jbv)

From the perspective of first century Gnostic Christians, Jesus' goal was to teach a new theory of human nature that is, like Newton's Theory of Gravity, true for everyone, everywhere, and for all time. One does not have to hold a particular doctrine, believe a particular religion or philosophy, or have a particular spiritual orientation to profit from Jesus' theory. We need only understand the theory to benefit from its wisdom, for it can change the character of our thoughts and, in turn, our consciousness of reality. Simply said, the goal of Gnostic Christianity is to make the reasoning mind an instrument of our spiritual nature-globally.

We stand on the edge of a revolution in consciousness, as momentous as any in history. Knowledge of Jesus' Gnostic/logos teachings is the key to that revolution. The second coming of Jesus is not Jesus in person, but his form of higher consciousness within us all.

What is Gnosis / Knowledge?

2009-01-03T00:30:00.001-05:00

What is Gnosis / Knowledge?

"The danger facing humanity requires getting beyond the usual mind or self sense. Political action, social programs, humanitarian work and so forth are good, but not enough. Only transformed consciousness can transform the world. The ultimate action then, is no action at all except to change consciousness." (1)

"Gnostic," from the Greek term gnosis, means factual knowledge, specifically knowledge about the logos/logic of God. Gnostic Christianity is not about Jesus' public teachings; it is about the gnosis, or practical knowledge, that Jesus taught in private.

The private teachings of Jesus are mentioned in Mark 4:10-12, 4:33-34; Matthew 13:10-11, 13:34; and Luke 8:9-10.

In Mk 4:33-34 jbv, for example, Mark said: "Using many parables…he [Jesus] spoke the word* [again, meaning the logic or reasoning of God]…so far as they [the general public] were capable of understanding it. He would not speak to them except in parables, but explained everything to his disciples when they were alone." In Rm 1:9-14, Paul explains that "pneumatic truth [Jesus' logos/logic teachings] cannot be communicated by means of written documents but only through oral communication. For this reason, the apostle says 'we [Gnostics] speak wisdom [Jesus' Christ or logic teachings] among the initiates (teleioi [perfect], 1Cor 2:16) and to them only 'in secret', since most people remain incapable of receiving it."

Scholars refer to Jesus' private teachings as his "logos," logic or oral tradition. Mystics refer to those teachings as Jesus' lost or secret teachings. The important thing to remember about Jesus' public and private teachings is that both are his. Jesus used his public teachings to inspire us, through mystical awe and spiritual insight, to love one another. He used his private/Gnostic teachings to provide us with the foundations for a nonjudgmental system of logic that makes it reasonable for us to relate ideas in ways we now think of as spiritual and loving.

http://www.gnosticchristianity.com/

Important terms and concepts ....

2009-01-02T16:33:00.002-05:00

Important terms and concepts

Aeons Aeon

In many Gnostic systems, the various emanations of the God, who is also known by such names as the One, the Monad, Aion teleos (The Perfect Aeon), Bythos (Depth or profundity, Greek Βυθος), Proarkhe (Before the Beginning, Greek προαρχη), E Arkhe (The Beginning, Greek ἡ ἀρχή), are called aeons. This first being is also an æon and has an inner being within itself, known as Ennoia (Thought), Charis (Grace), or Sige (Greek Σιγη, Silence). The split perfect being conceives the second aeon, Caen (Power), within itself. Along with the male Caen comes the female æon Akhana (Truth, Love).

The aeons often came in male/female pairs called syzygies, and were numerous (20-30). Two of the most commonly listed æons were Jesus and Sophia. The aeons constitute the pleroma, the "region of light". The lowest regions of the pleroma are closest to the darkness; that is, the physical world.

When an æon named Sophia emanated without her partner aeon, the result was the Demiurge, or half-creator (Occasionally referred to as Ialdaboth in Gnostic texts), a creature that should never have come into existence. This creature does not belong to the pleroma, and the One emanates two savior æons, Christ and the Holy Spirit to save man from the Demiurge. Christ then took the form of the man, Jesus, in order to be able to teach man how to achieve gnosis; that is, return to the pleroma.

These systems, however, are only a sample of the various interpretations that exist. The roles of familiar beings such as Jesus Christ, Sophia, and the Demiurge usually share the same general themes between systems but may have somewhat different functions or identities ascribed to them.

Archon Archon

In late antiquity some variants of Gnosticism used the term Archon to refer to several servants of the Demiurge, the "creator god" that stood between spiritual humanity and a transcendent God that could only be reached through gnosis. In this context they may be seen as having the roles of the angels and demons of the Old Testament.

The Ophites accepted the existence of seven archons: Iadabaoth or Ialdabaoth (who created the six others), Iao, Sabaoth, Adonaios, Elaios, Astaphanos and Horaios (Origen, Contra Celsum, VI.31). Ialdabaoth had a head of a lion, just like Mithraic Kronos (Chronos) and Vedic Narasimha, a form of Vishnu.

Abraxas/Abrasax Abraxas

Engraving from an Abraxas stone.

The Egyptian Gnostic Basilideans referred to a figure called Abraxas who was at the head of 365 spiritual beings (Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, I.24); it is unclear what to make of Irenaeus' use of the term 'Archon', which may simply mean 'ruler' in this context.

The role and function of Abraxas for Basilideans is not clear.

The word Abraxas was engraved on certain antique stones, called on that account Abraxas stones, which may have been used as amulets or charms by Gnostic sects. In popular culture, Abraxas is sometimes considered the name of a god who incorporated both Good and Evil (God and Demiurge) in one entity, and therefore representing the monotheistic God, singular, but (unlike, for example, the Christian God) not omni-benevolent (See Hesse's Demian, and Jung's Seven Sermons to the Dead). Opinions abound on Abraxas, who in recent centuries has been claimed to be both an Egyptian god and a demon, sometimes even being associated with the dual nature of Satan/Lucifer. The word abracadabra may be related to Abraxas.

The above information relates to interpretations of ancient amulets and to reports of Christian heresy hunters which are not always clear.

Actual ancient Gnostic texts from the Nag Hammadi Library, such as the Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians, refer to Abrasax as an Aeon dwelling with Sophia and other Aeons of the Spiritual Fullness in the light of the luminary Eleleth. In several texts, the luminary Eleleth is the last of the luminaries (Spiritual Lights) that come forward, and it is the Aeon Sophia, associated with Eleleth, who encounters darkness and becomes involved in the chain of events that leads to the Demiurge and Archon's rule of this world, and the salvage effort that ensues. As such, the role of Aeons of Eleleth, including Abrasax, Sophia, and others, pertains to this outer border of the Divine Fullness that encounters the ignorance of the world of Lack and interacts to rectify the error of ignorance in the world of materiality.

Words like or similar to Abraxas or Abrasax also appear in the Greek Magical Papyri. There are similarities and differences between such figures in reports about Basiledes' teaching, in the larger magical traditions of the Graeco-Roman world, in the classic ancient Gnostic texts such as the Gospel of the Egyptians, and in later magical and esoteric writings.

The Swiss Psychologist Carl Jung wrote a short Gnostic treatise in 1916 called The Seven Sermons to the Dead, which called Abraxas a God higher than the Christian God and Devil, that combines all opposites into one Being.

Demiurge: Demiurge

A lion-faced deity found on a Gnostic gem in Bernard de Montfaucon's L'antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures may be a depiction of the Demiurge.

The term Demiurge refers to an entity (usually seen as evil) responsible for the creation of the physical universe and the physical aspect of humanity.

The term occurs in a number of other religious and philosophical systems, most notably Platonism. While always suggestive of a creator god, the moral judgements regarding the demiurge vary wildly, from a benign grand architect to an evil subvertor of God's will.

Like Plato, Gnosticism presents a distinction between the highest, unknowable "alien God" and the demiurgic "creator" of the material. However, in contrast to Plato, several systems of Gnostic thought present the Demiurge as antagonistic to the will of the Supreme God: his act of creation either in unconscious imitation of the divine model, and thus fundamentally flawed, or else formed with the malevolent intention of entrapping aspects of the divine in materiality. Thus, in such systems, the Demiurge acts as a solution to the problem of evil. In the Apocryphon of John (several versions of which are found in the Nag Hammadi library), the Demiurge has the name "Yaltabaoth", and proclaims himself as God:

"Now the archon who is weak has three names. The first name is Yaltabaoth, the second is Saklas, and the third is Samael. And he is impious in his arrogance which is in him. For he said, 'I am God and there is no other God beside me,' for he is ignorant of his strength, the place from which he had come."

Gnostic myth recounts that Sophia (Greek, literally meaning "wisdom"), the Demiurge's mother and a partial aspect of the divine Pleroma or "Fullness", desired to create something apart from the divine totality, and without the receipt of divine assent. In this abortive act of separate creation, she gave birth to the monstrous Demiurge and, being ashamed of her deed, she wrapped him in a cloud and created a throne for him within it. The Demiurge, isolated, did not behold his mother, nor anyone else, and thus concluded that only he himself existed, being ignorant of the superior levels of reality that were his birth-place.

The Gnostic myths describing these events are full of intricate nuances portraying the declination of aspects of the divine into human form; this process occurs through the agency of the Demiurge who, having stolen a portion of power from his mother, sets about a work of creation in unconscious imitation of the superior Pleromatic realm. Thus Sophia's power becomes enclosed within the material forms of humanity, themselves entrapped within the material universe: the goal of Gnostic movements was typically the awakening of this spark, which permitted a return by the subject to the superior, non-material realities which were its primal source. (See Sethian Gnosticism.)

"Samael" may equate to the Judaic Angel of Death, and corresponds to the Christian demon of that name, as well as Satan. Literally, it can mean "Blind God" or "God of the Blind" in Aramaic (Syriac sæmʕa-ʔel). Another alternative title for Yaldabaoth, "Saklas", is Aramaic for "fool" (Syriac sækla "the foolish one").

Some Gnostic philosophers identify the Demiurge with Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, in opposition and contrast to the God of the New Testament. Still others equated the being with Satan. Catharism apparently inherited their idea of Satan as the creator of the evil world directly or indirectly from Gnosticism.

Gnosis: Gnosis

The word 'Gnosticism' is a modern construction, though based on an antiquated linguistic expression: it comes from the Greek word meaning 'knowledge', gnosis (γνῶσις). However, gnosis itself refers to a very specialised form of knowledge, deriving both from the exact meaning of the original Greek term and its usage in Platonist philosophy.

Unlike modern English, ancient Greek was capable of discerning between several different forms of knowing. These different forms may be described in English as being propositional knowledge, indicative of knowledge acquired indirectly through the reports of others or otherwise by inference (such as "I know of George Bush" or "I know Berlin is in Germany"), and empirical knowledge acquired by direct participation or acquaintance (such as "I know George Bush personally" or "I know Berlin, having visited").

Gnosis (γνῶσις) refers to knowledge of the second kind. Therefore, in a religious context, to be 'Gnostic' should be understood as being reliant not on knowledge in a general sense, but as being specially receptive to mystical or esoteric experiences of direct participation with the divine. Indeed, in most Gnostic systems the sufficient cause of salvation is this 'knowledge of' ('acquaintance with') the divine. This is commonly identified with a process of inward 'knowing' or self-exploration, comparable to that encouraged by Plotinus (ca. 205–270 AD). However, as may be seen, the term 'gnostic' also had precedent usage in several ancient philosophical traditions, which must also be weighed in considering the very subtle implications of its appellation to a set of ancient religious groups.

Monad (apophatic theology) Monad (Gnosticism)

In many Gnostic systems (and heresiologies), God is known as the Monad, the One, The Absolute, Aion teleos (The Perfect Æon), Bythos (Depth or Profundity, Βυθος), Proarkhe (Before the Beginning, προαρχη), and E Arkhe (The Beginning, η αρχη). God is the high source of the pleroma, the region of light. The various emanations of God are called æons.

Within certain variations of Gnosticism, especially those inspired by Monoimus, the Monad was the highest God which created lesser gods, or elements (similar to æons).

According to Hippolytus, this view was inspired by the Pythagoreans, who called the first thing that came into existence the Monad, which begat the dyad, which begat the numbers, which begat the point, begetting lines, etc. This was also clarified in the writings of Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus. This teaching being largely Neopythagorean via Numenius as well.

This Monad is the spiritual source of everything which emanates the pleroma, and could be contrasted to the dark Demiurge (Yaldabaoth) that controls matter.

The Sethian cosmogony as most famously contained in the Apocryphon ('Secret book') of John describes an unknown God, very similar to the orthodox apophatic theology, although very different from the orthodox credal teachings that there is one such god who is identified also as creator of heaven and earth. In describing the nature of a creator god associated with Biblical texts, orthodox theologians often attempt to define God through a series of explicit positive statements, themselves universal but in the divine taken to their superlative degrees: he is omniscient, omnipotent and truly benevolent. The Sethian conception of the most hidden transcendent God is, by contrast, defined through negative theology: he is immovable, invisible, intangible, ineffable; commonly, 'he' is seen as being hermaphroditic, a potent symbol for being, as it were, 'all-containing'. In the Apocryphon of John, this god is good in that it bestows goodness. After the apophatic statements, the process of the Divine in action are used to describe the effect of such a god.

An apophatic approach to discussing the Divine is found throughout gnosticism, Vedanta, and Platonic and Aristotelian theology as well. It is also found in some Judaic sources.

Pleroma Pleroma

Pleroma (Greek πληρωμα) generally refers to the totality of God's powers. The term means fullness, and is used in Christian theological contexts: both in Gnosticism generally, and in Colossians 2.9.

Gnosticism holds that the world is controlled by evil archons, one of whom is the demiurge, the deity of the Old Testament who holds the human spirit captive.

The heavenly pleroma is the center of divine life, a region of light "above" (the term is not to be understood spatially) our world, occupied by spiritual beings such as aeons (eternal beings) and sometimes archons. Jesus is interpreted as an intermediary aeon who was sent from the pleroma, with whose aid humanity can recover the lost knowledge of the divine origins of humanity. The term is thus a central element of Gnostic cosmology.

Pleroma is also used in the general Greek language and is used by the Greek Orthodox church in this general form since the word appears under the book of Colossians. Proponents of the view that Paul was actually a gnostic, such as Elaine Pagels of Princeton University, view the reference in Colossians as something that was to be interpreted in the gnostic sense.

Sophia Sophia (wisdom)

In Gnostic tradition, the term Sophia (Σoφíα, Greek for "wisdom") refers to the final and lowest emanation of God.

In most if not all versions of the gnostic myth, Sophia births the demiurge, who in turn brings about the creation of materiality. The positive or negative depiction of materiality thus resides a great deal on mythic depictions of Sophia's actions. She is occasionally referred to by the Hebrew equivalent of Achamoth (this is a feature of Ptolemy's version of the Valentinian gnostic myth). Jewish Gnosticism with a focus on Sophia was active by 90.^{[citation needed]}

Almost all gnostic systems of the Syrian or Egyptian type taught that the universe began with an original, unknowable God, referred to as the Parent or Bythos, as the Monad by Monoimus, or the first Aeon by still other traditions. From this initial unitary beginning, the One spontaneously emanated further Aeons, pairs of progressively 'lesser' beings in sequence. The lowest of these pairs were Sophia and Christ. The Aeons together made up the Pleroma, or fullness, of God, and thus should not be seen as distinct from the divine, but symbolic abstractions of the divine nature.

WHAT IS A GNOSTIC CHRISTIAN?

2009-01-02T15:46:00.000-05:00

WHAT IS A GNOSTIC CHRISTIAN?
Gnostic Christianity is a Way of Life based on the original teachings of Jesus Christ.

A gnostic is a person who believes that salvation is gained through the acquisition of divine knowledge or gnosis. Gnostic Christians believe that the knowledge necessary for salvation has been revealed through Jesus Christ. Gnostics recognize that this world is subject to powers of darkness that distort our concept of reality. As Jesus explained, "The shadows of this world are perceived by mortals, and they think they know the Truth, but the Reality which casts the shadows is hidden from them, and they do not perceive the Light." (Sayings 2:2)

When gnostics speak of salvation, they mean being freed from these illusions of darkness so that they can perceive Reality. As Jesus said, "I tell you the truth when I say that only when you perceive shadows as shadows, and search the Light, will you perceive the Reality which is God." (IBID.) He also said, "If you continue to acquire gnosis through me and live by the principles I teach, you will be my true disciples. Then you will learn of Truth, and Truth will set you free." (Testimony of St. John 8:31-32)

While Jesus used symbolic parables to motivate his hearers to search for the knowledge of Truth, he privately entrusted to his disciples gnosis, experiential knowledge which they could share only with those who became their fellow disciples. On one occasion, Jesus said to his disciples,

It is your privilege to learn the mysteries of the realm of the Eloheim because you have entered the Covenant," Jesus replied, "but to those who remain outside the Covenant, Truth can be shown only in parables. This is because they live in a world of illusions and shadows where Truth is hidden from them. Only the shadow of Truth can reach them until they reject the lie and come into the Covenant of Light." *** In this way, Jesus used many parables to point their minds to the word, for the parables were all they were able to receive, but through the parables, some of them would have their minds opened and would begin to perceive the Inner Truth. When he was alone with his disciples, however, Jesus expounded these principles, unfolding before their minds greater Light and carrying them deeper into the mysteries of the spiritual realm. (Testimony of St. Mark 4:10-11, 26-27)

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2009-01-02T15:26:00.000-05:00

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Our Experience of Scripture
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We frequently receive questions about the scripture texts we offer on our web site. People (including me) have asked, “Where do these writings come from? Who has published them? Can I buy them in a bookstore? How do they relate to the gnostic scriptures I am already familiar with from the Nag Hammadi library, the Bruce codex, or the Askew codex?” On occasion, someone will read the material on the web site and find a quotation from a source that is unfamiliar, for example, Teachings of the Master, or Book of Covenants. Unlike the many Pearl scriptures featured on our web site, these two writings are not published there; when people request a copy of the complete text, they are told (for reasons that will be discussed) that it is unavailable. This short article is an attempt to answer the questions posed in this paragraph. To begin, we will discuss our view of revelation and how it differs from an orthodox view.

What Is Revelation?

Most of us who were raised in an orthodox Christian religion have been taught that revelation is obtainable through two or three primary sources: (1) scripture; (2) sacraments; and (3) church hierarchy. In an orthodox setting, if a person has an experience of divine reality, for that experience to be considered revelation, the content of the message must agree with all prior revelations already approved by the church elders. Usually these prior, approved revelations are published in the Bible, and in the case of Roman Catholics, in the official pronouncements of the Pope and bishops around the world, or in the writings of canonized saints.

Unfortunately for the contemporary Catholic, in 1545 the Council of Trent declared the approved books of the Bible to be closed. No further revelations could be added to the “canon.” Not even the Protestants have challenged this rule, except to say that they do not recognize several texts from the Hebrew scriptures(1) that the Catholics did include in their approved books of the Bible. It is interesting to observe that orthodox Christians disagree among themselves as to what books should be considered revelation. It is further intriguing that their disagreement is about which books should be left out, as opposed to which new books should be let in!

How do gnostics differ from this approach to revelation? First, gnostics do not attempt to turn revelation into a rule or a way to measure which kind of insight is acceptable or not. Gnostics experience the presence of the divine reality in various ways ranging from the mundane events of their daily lives to profound states of consciousness during their meditations and reflections. Sometimes the experience of the Divine challenges one’s assumptions or current beliefs. The person may become aware of new (to oneself) thoughts, insights, or principles. Further, the new awareness may trigger an emotional reaction that lends a sense of importance to the event.

In some cases, the gnostic may receive in his or her mind a picture or a story or a message that seems important to write down. The message might include words and actions of well-known figures such as Jesus, Moses, Abraham, etc. who personify archetypes(2) within us. In other cases, the gnostic may receive an awareness that translates previously published writings in a manner that opens up the deeper meanings of the text. These kinds of experiences can serve as examples of the continuous work of the Spirit to open our minds to greater and greater awareness of reality.

The gnostic does not compare the more recent revelation to prior revelations in the Bible because a revelation from the divine Mind is always current no matter when the human being received the revelation. We do not make the assumption that because a text is a few thousand years old, it must be closer to Truth. Rather, we assume that the Spirit worked in the lives of people then and continues to work in our lives now. We can go through the exact same process of receiving revelation that the ancient gnostics did. There is no need to make the comparisons such as “more authentic” or “less inspired,” etc.

When a revelation involves the figures we are familiar with from Bible stories, we do not assume that the revelation must be analyzed as a historical narrative of past events. Instead, we take the view that the Bible figures personify archetypes that live within us and speak to us just as they lived within the people of the past and spoke to them. A revelation that is given today about the sayings of Jesus is a revelation from the living archetype of the Christ that lives within our psyches. It is not a series of quotations spoken by the man, Jesus of Nazareth, a few thousand years ago.

The quality that particularly characterizes the gnostic experience of revelation is that the revelation is accepted as an archetypal experience of the divine that is meant to provide insight and inspiration for the soul’s journey. If the numinous experience of revelation is later reduced to a written text, and that written text provides others with insight and inspiration for their work of individuation(3), then that text can be considered a worthy scriptural revelation for the community. If the text does not resonate among the members of the group, it can be accepted as a personal revelation that remains meaningful and helpful to the one who received it.

Unlike orthodox believers, the gnostic is not overly attached to the idea of a “perfect” revelation that agrees with all past revelations, or a “perfect” translation that literally moves the ancient language into modern English. The focus among gnostics has more to do with the enhancing of the soul’s journey, the furthering of the experience of the divine in other people. Because the experience of the divine is so often a right-brained phenomenon, the literal focus on words, or the strict matching of present with past revelation, is often a distraction from the centrality of gnosis as an experience, rather than a concept.

Does this mean that gnostics lack a central tradition that guides our approach to the divine? Certainly not! We have a robust tradition, built on many years of living experience that continues to shape and guide us as we seek revelation. There is a definite coherence to our tradition. We are not scattered in our thinking or practices. Although we open ourselves to the continuous revelation of the divine, this does not mean that just any psychic experience, including grandiose or paranoid fantasies, becomes equivalent to the Spirit’s revelation among us. Why not? The two key answers have to do with discernment and trust.

Discernment is a gift of the Spirit. It is the ability to interpret the meaning of one’s experience, including sometimes baffling psychic or spiritual experiences straight out of the collective unconscious. The Spirit works in the community to help people to relate to the revelation and to interpret it in depth so that its message furthers the soul’s journey and provides insight and inspiration for the individuation work. If the interpretation of the revelation resonates with the community, it will do so because it is providing needed assistance in the gnostic pursuit of wholeness.

The other key answer to why continuous revelation enhances our living gnostic tradition is that we trust the presence and work of the Spirit among us and we trust that the revelation experiences that we have are always—when interpreted in depth—helpful to knowing ourselves and thus knowing the divine. We understand that if we are being given an experience to live with, to relate to, to discern, then that experience will in some way prove helpful to us as we seek to fulfill our primary reason for being on earth.

The principle of trust is very important to appreciate as we ponder the meaning of revelation. We can trust that the Spirit does not lead us astray, causing us to adopt merely self-serving philosophies that rationalize egocentric choices. But surely, you say, many people have fallen into that exact trap and made horrific choices in the name of their god. In the name of Jesus Christ, popes have authorized Crusades and Inquisitions, causing the murders of countless women, men, and children. Ministers have led their followers to drink poisoned Kool Aid and commit mass suicide. How can we discern the voice of the Spirit from the voice of the archons and demiurge(4)? The answer lies in discovering and meditating on the principles of divine Mind that are revealed in myth.

Principles Embedded in Myth

What is myth?

A myth might be defined as a story that illuminates some important principle, or principles, concerning mortal existence. In this sense, a myth is always true because it reveals some aspect of Truth. This concept of myth is not affected by whether the incidents or conditions described in the story ever actually existed on a time line. The important thing is that they do exist in the Reality we must master to enhance our mortal existence.

A myth may demonstrate one principle at one time, and something quite different in the context of another time. In both cases, the myth would be true because it speaks to the people of that time, unveiling for them some aspect of Divine Truth or Ultimate Reality.

In the Pearl community, we don’t approach the scriptures by trying to fit meanings to them. Instead, we use the techniques of meditation to get into the scripture and experience its reality, the situation that caused this story to be included in the sacred books, and how that situation applies to us today. This is approaching scripture as myth.

To discover the meaning hidden in the myths of scripture, we must approach them as we would an icon. When we look at an icon, we may appreciate it as a work of art. We may critically analyze it, consider to what school it belongs, consider techniques the artist used. We may examine its history, consider when it was produced, and research what others have said about it. While all these avenues of consideration may provide useful background for our exploration of the icon, by themselves they cannot bring us to the point where we can discern the value of the icon in our search for Truth. Only by approaching the icon metaphysically, applying the techniques we learn in meditation, do we learn the secrets the icon holds for us.

In the same way, when you approach the scriptures, approach them as a basis for meditation. It may be valuable to read commentaries and examine their historical context, but the secrets of the scriptures will remain hidden from you until you get beyond the words to view the Reality which their stories are unfolding. Instead of trying to find a “correct” interpretation, allow yourself to let the timeless archetypes speak through the words. For example, you can attempt to discern the experience the writer may have had that would prompt this writing to emerge. What was the writer moved to communicate? If you read a saying of Jesus, ask what was a likely question or situation that drew out his response. Don’t worry about whether it happened exactly that way in the past, because what is important is what is happening within you now. Ask yourself why this scripture was considered valuable enough to be included in the canon of scripture. Then probe your own feelings and thoughts that spring up from your reading. When you meditate on these things, you will begin to perceive the underlying principles of Truth that are embedded in the myth.

This takes us back to our question about trusting the continuous revelations of the Spirit. It is clear from our experience that the Spirit continues to consistently reveal images, ideas, stories, perceptions, and insights that flow harmoniously with all the revelations already received by our predecessors. Each contemporary revelation is like a new chapter being added to a beautifully written and cohesive story. The plot line is developed intelligently and the characters grow gradually. Surprising things happen, but all together the revelations fit into each other and into the whole motif of the gnostic myth of salvation. As we do our part and meditate in depth, new revelations may be added to our understanding, but always those new revelations enhance the living Word and open our minds to new ways of thinking.

Invitation To Explore More:

As you read through the scriptures on the web site,

THE PEARL---> http://www.thepearl.org you may resonate with the images, ideas, and invitations. You may feel the presence of the Spirit moving you to take another step in your individuation journey. If this is your experience, we suggest you trust it and find a way to make room in your life for taking that next step. This is our intent in providing these revelations and translations that have come to our community.

The Spirit works in so many ways and reaches out to so many people of diverse backgrounds; the gnostic approach to revelation opens up to this diversity in the Spirit’s work. Revelation can come through anyone of any culture, age, gender, or belief system. Our gnostic tradition provides us, as it were, with a strong receiver that picks up signals from all over the world. We rejoice in all the revelations that others have received, but we particularly recognize the power of the revelations we have received, and we want to share them with you. Our scripture texts provided on this web site represent our experience of opening up to the Spirit, receiving a revelation, and then reflecting deeply on that experience until we were able to write down in words what originally came in flashes of insight. After a written text was developed, we sat with it, reflected on it, and discerned its power to assist us in our individuation work. Now, we continue to read, reflect, and meditate on these scriptures, which continue to unfold more and more depth through their message. All this is the continuous work of the divine among us, the continuous revelation of the Spirit that shapes us and leads us to become our true divine selves. It is this grand vision of Reality that we invite you to share with us.

_____________________________

1 These texts are Baruch, Sirach, Tobit, Wisdom of Solomon, 1 Esdras, Judith, and 1-4 Maccabees.

2 Archetypes are pre-formed patterns and themes within the human psyche that have their own intentions apart from what the conscious ego may intend. The figure of Jesus, for example, has to do with the power of redemption and salvation that lies within, but remains untapped until we begin a conscious relationship with it by undergoing an initiation known as immersion. In a revelation experience, the archetype of redemption is likely to be personified as Jesus.

3 Individuation is a word coined by C.G. Jung to refer to the process of becoming a whole, unified human being. This is a process because it gradually unfolds and, if we are doing the work of individuation, we are always moving toward greater and greater integration of our spirit, soul, and body. Gnostics recognize (as did Jung) that the human psyche is a chaotic blend of opposing forces that are mutually antagonistic toward each other, and until a person undertakes the difficult work of individuation, the inner forces will interfere with the person’s freedom to be fully human. Individuation implies that the person has consciously related to these opposing forces within and is finding a way to make room for them all in a harmonious, unified relationship among the powers of the conscious, unconscious, and hyper-conscious aspects of the psyche.

4 The demiurge is a personification of the archetype in us that has to do with making God in our own egocentric image. Human beings without gnosis tend to project their own prejudices and assumptions on to the divine being, making the divine out to be angry or jealous or having favorites or being worried about the sexual behaviors of mortal beings. Gnostics recognize this archetype as a false god even though much of orthodox literature represents this archetype as the “one, true God.” The archons are deputies of the demiurge, and they work to keep humans trapped in this illusion of being separate, mortal creatures.

What Is a Gnostic?

2009-01-02T14:48:00.001-05:00

What Is a Gnostic?

by Stephan A. Hoeller

Gnosticism, they say, is on the upsurge...
So just what is it?

Are we witnessing a rediscovery of Gnosticism? To judge from the burgeoning new literature and the increased use of the terms "gnosis" and "Gnosticism" in popular publications, the answer would seem to be yes. Only twenty-five years ago, when one used the word "Gnostic," it was very likely to be misunderstood as "agnostic," and thus have one's statement turned into its exact opposite. Such misapprehensions are far less likely today. Nevertheless, increased academic attention (beginning with the discovery of the Nag Hammadi scriptures in 1945) and the ensuing popular interest have produced a confusion of tongues which is anything but helpful for the sincere inquirer into matters Gnostic. It is often difficult even to tell what is meant by the word.

The difficulty in defining Gnosticism is not entirely of recent origin. As early as 1910, a small book was published in London that in many ways foreshadowed current trends, including the difficulties in definition. The title of the work was Gnosticism: The Coming Apostasy; the author, a certain D.M. Panton, was an anxious defender of Christian orthodoxy, which he felt was menaced by an emerging Gnostic revival. Gnosticism, Panton wrote, had surfaced in the twentieth century in the forms of Theosophy, Christian Science, some forms of spiritualism, and in what was called the "New Theology," which had been introduced primarily by German writers on religion. (A biography of Marcion by theologian Adolf von Harnack created much interest and controversy at that time.) While earlier crypto-Gnostics, such as Emanuel Swedenborg, William Blake, George Fox, and Elias Hicks camouflaged their heretical beliefs, Panton argued, twentieth-century Gnostics no longer bothered with concealment. The gnosticizing movements of the early twentieth century, wrote Panton, were "frankly and jubilantly Gnostic"; their thought and their movements carried within them the "throbbing heart of Gnosticism, perhaps the most dreaded foe the Christian faith ever confronted."

In some ways Panton's anti-Gnostic tirades have an advantage over much of the more recent literature, for Panton still possessed a clear understanding of what constitutes Gnosticism. Such is not the case today. If we contrast these early-twentieth-century analyses with some current ones, we may recognize how unclear our understanding has become. In a European publication concerned with contemporary aspects of Gnosticism, Ioan Culianu writes:

Once I believed that Gnosticism was a well-defined phenomenon belonging to the religious history of Late Antiquity. Of course, I was ready to accept the idea of different prolongations of ancient Gnosis, and even that of spontaneous generation of views of the world in which, at different times, the distinctive features of Gnosticism occur again.

I was soon to learn however, that I was a naïf indeed. Not only Gnosis was gnostic, but the Catholic authors were gnostic, the Neoplatonic too, Reformation was gnostic, Communism was gnostic, Nazism was gnostic, liberalism, existentialism and psychoanalysis were gnostic too, modern biology was gnostic, Blake, Yeats, Kafka were gnostic…. I learned further that science is gnostic and superstition is gnostic…Hegel is gnostic and Marx is gnostic; all things and their opposite are equally gnostic.¹

At least one circumstance emerges from this statement that is widely overlooked in America. In Europe "Gnosis" and "Gnosticism" are almost always used interchangeably. The suggestion that term "gnosis" ought to be used to describe a state of consciousness, while "Gnosticism" should denote the Gnostic system, has never caught on. The use of such classical Gnosticism of Valentinus, Basilides, et al., persists in European literature, including the writings of such scholars as Gilles Quispel, Kurt Rudolph, and Giovanni Filoramo (to mention some of the most recent ones). It is true that the late Robert McLachlan put forth a proposal to use these terms otherwise, but current usage in Europe has not followed it.

It is evident that a word used in such contradictory ways has lost its meaning. No wonder GNOSIS writer Charles Coulombe despairs over the situation when writing recently in a Catholic publication:

In reality, "Gnosticism," like "Protestantism," is a word that has lost most of its meaning. Just as we would need to know whether a "Protestant" writer is Calvinist, Lutheran, Anabaptist, or whatever in order to evaluate him properly, so too the "Gnostic" must be identified.²

A Political Confusion

One of the most confusing voices comes from the discipline of political science. In his Walgreen Lectures at the University of Chicago in 1951, émigré scholar Eric Voegelin rose to the defense of what he called the "classic and Christian tradition" against what he perceived as the "growth of Gnosticism." This opening salvo was followed by such books as The New Science of Politics, the multivolume Order and History, and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism. Voegelin became a prophet of a new theory of history, in which Gnosticism played a most nefarious role. All modern totalitarian ideologies were in some way spiritually related to Gnosticism, said Voegelin. Marxists, Nazis, and just about everybody else the good professor found reprehensible were in reality Gnostics, engaged in "immanentizing the eschaton" by reconstituting society into a heaven on earth. Since Gnostics did not accept the conventional Christian eschaton of heaven and hell, Voegelin concluded that they must be engaged in a millenarian revolutionizing of earthly existence. At the same time, Voegelin was bound to admit that the Gnostics regarded the earthly realm as generally hopeless and unredeemable. One wonders how the unredeemable earthly kingdom could be turned into the "immanentized eschaton" of an earthly utopia. That Voegelin's new Gnostics had no knowledge of or sympathy with historical Gnosticism did not bother him either. Gnostics they were, and that was that.

Voegelin's confusion was made worse by a number of conservative political thinkers, mainly with Catholic connections. Thomas Molnar, Tilo Schabert, and Steven A. McKnight followed Voegelin's theories despite their obvious inconsistencies. In Molnar's view, Gnostics were not only responsible for all modern utopianism, but also for the inordinate attachment of modern people to science and technology. The scientific world view, said these folk, is in fact a Gnostic world view, and it is responsible for treating humans as machines and for making societies into machinelike collectives.

The politicized view of Gnosticism continues to have its adherents, but these are increasingly recruited from the lunatic fringe. Gnostics are still represented as dangerous subversives in pulp magazines and obscure conspiracy pamphlets "exposing" Freemasons, Satanists, and other pests. Meanwhile, respectable conservative thinkers have dropped the Gnostic issue. Some, like scholar and former U.S. Senator S.I. Hayakawa, have subjected Voegelin and his theories to severe criticism and ridicule.

Traditionalist Difficulties

Another sometimes confusing voice comes from writers who are bent on proving that within the existing major religions a secret tradition of gnosis may be found which is not identical to the "heretical" Gnosticism of the early Christian centuries. In his 1947 work The Perennial Philosophy, Aldous Huxley promulgated a kind of gnosis that was in effect a mystery reserved for elites, revealed at the dawn of history and handed down through various religious traditions, where it still maintains itself in spite of its ostensible incompatibility with the official dogmas of those traditions. With this view, Huxley approximated the more radical position held by Traditionalists such as René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon.

Huxley, on the other hand, never passed judgment on anyone who called himself a Gnostic. One could only wish the same could be said of other Traditionalists. Followers of Guénon (who, born a Catholic, converted to Islam in a somewhat untraditional manner) often castigate the early Gnostic teachers in a manner reminiscent of the more extreme ancient polemicists like Irenaeus or Tertullian. The Traditionalists' division of Gnostic writers into "false Gnostics" and "authentic Gnostics" reflects standards that are nothing if not arbitrary; contemporary research indicates that during the first three of four centuries A.D. there was as yet no true orthodoxy and thus no heresy either. Instead, many opinions on religious matters, including gnosis, flourished side by side. Certainly there were disagreements, but to arbitrarily extrapolate standards of falsity and authenticity from these polemics does not seem justified.

Academic Ambiguities

The 1988 edition of The Nag Hammadi Library contains a lengthy afterword entitled "The Modern Relevance of Gnosticism."³ Its author, Richard Smith, ostensibly reviews the numerous developments in Western culture which appear to be related to Gnosticism. One would hope that here at last we might find a definition of true Gnosticism and a list of modern writers and thinkers who might appear as its representatives. Unfortunately this is not the case.

Smith lists a number of important figures of modern culture from the eighteenth century onward who were sympathetic to Gnosticism. Reading this afterword, however, one gets the impression that few of these seminal figures possessed an adequate definition of Gnosticism, and that they thus more often than not misused and misappropriated the term. The eighteenth-century historian Edward Gibbon, for example, is accused of a "mischievous lie" in referring to the Gnostics in complimentary terms. (Admittedly Gibbon did not share the low esteem in which the Church Fathers held Gnostics, but does this make him a liar?) And the Gnostic and Manichaean sympathies of Voltaire are represented as being motivated by his opposition to churchly authority. But could the great philosophé have had other reasons for his views? It is well known that Voltaire was an ardent Freemason, and he might have received favorable information about Gnostics through the esoteric currents flowing in the secret fraternities of his time. Maybe he was privy to knowledge unknown to Smith.

In the same vein, Smith implies that C.G. Jung appropriated Gnosticism by turning it into psychological theory. "Jung takes the entire dualist myth and locates it within the psyche," Smith writes.⁴ Personally I have devoted the major part of my life to exploring the relationship of Jung's thought to Gnosticism, so such statements touch a nerve.

Jung was not only interested in the Gnostics, but he considered them the discoverers and certainly the most important forerunners of depth psychology. The association between Jung's psychology and Gnosticism is profound, and its scope is increasingly revealed with the passage of time and the wider availability of the Nag Hammadi scriptures. My studies have convinced me that Jung did not intend to locate the content of Gnostic teachings in the psyche pure and simple. To say that Gnosticism is "nothing but" psychology would have horrified Jung, for he opposed the concept of "nothing but." What made Jung's view radically different from those of his predecessors was simply this: he believed that Gnostic teachings and myths originated in the personal psychospiritual experience of the Gnostic sages. What originates in the psyche bears the imprint of the psyche. Hence the close affinity between Gnosticism and depth psychology. Jung's view may thus be called an interpolation, but not an appropriation. The need for definitions appears greater than ever in the light of such controversies.

Psychological and Existentialist Models

The Italian scholar Giovanni Filoramo calls attention to the fact that the Nag Hammadi scriptures were favorably received by a wide public in part because "certain areas of the cultural panorama showed a disposition, a peculiar sensitivity to the…texts,…which dealt with a phenomenon that they themselves had in some way helped to keep alive."⁵

One of the persons who kept the Gnostic phenomenon alive was C.G. Jung's close associate, the Gnostic scholar Gilles Quispel, who labored long and hard on relating the ancient gnosis of Valentinus and other teachers to the modern gnosis of analytical psychology. He saw the Gnostic effort as involving deep insight into the ontological self, and thus as analogous to the best in depth psychology. Quispel's major work on the subject, Gnosis als Weltreligion ("Gnosis as a World Religion," published in 1972), explains in detail the relationship of Jung's model to Gnostic teachings. Quispel, like Jung himself, did not reduce Gnostic teachings to depth psychology, but rather pointed to depth psychology as a key to understanding Gnosticism.

Another key figure in the reevaluation of ancient Gnosticism was Hans Jonas. A pupil of existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger in the 1930s, Jonas turned his attention to the wisdom of the Gnostics, and discovered in them an ancient relative of existential philosophy. Existentialism's pessimism about earthly life and high regard for experience as against theory thus found a forebear and analogue. Although critical of the Gnostics' apparent "nihilism," Jonas was, along with Jung, one of the most important figures to bring Gnostic teachings into modern perspective.

The linkage effected by Jung and Jonas between Gnosticism in the past and living philosophies in the present was of crucial importance and came very close to supplying gnosis and Gnosticism with vital, living definitions. The questions posed (and answered) by the ancient Gnostics revealed themselves now, not as outlandish and bizarre, but as earlier discussions of issues addressed in more recent times by Freud, Jung, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and many others.

Toward Definition

The search for definitions is never easy, particularly in such fields as the social sciences. In these disciplines much attention must be given to the historical context in which beliefs and actions unfold. Crucial differences and similarities in nuance, tone, and subtleties of mood are more important here than hard and fast definitions. The debate about Gnosticism, it would seem, turns on such nuances, and it may well be that not much can be resolved by definitions. Nevertheless, the present chaotic conditions warrant an attempt.

In 1966, a distinguished assembly of scholars convened in Messina, Italy, for the purpose of arriving at some useful definitions of Gnosticism. The results of this gathering were not encouraging. The scholars proposed restricting the use of the term "Gnosticism" to certain second-century "heretical" movements, while the broader term "gnosis" was to be used to refer to "knowledge of the divine mysteries for an elite." While a useful attempt, it did not manage to clear up the confusion.

The difficulties in pinning down a definition of Gnosticism are intimately connected with the controversy about its origins. Was it indeed no more than a heretical offshoot, an eccentric and aberrant branch of Christianity, or was it the latest expression of a long, mostly hidden tradition that had existed for centuries before the Christian era? No one has answered these questions with final authority.

To understand Gnosticism, said Hans Jonas, one needs something very much like a musical ear. Such a Gnostic "musical ear" is not come by easily. One person who seemingly possesses it is Professor Clark Emery of the University of Miami. In a small work on William Blake, Emery summarizes twelve points on which Gnostics tended to agree. Nowhere in the current literature have I found anything else so concise and accurate in describing the normative characteristics of the Gnostic mythos. Hence I shall present it here as a suggested collection of criteria that one might apply in determining what Gnosticism is. The following characteristics may be considered normative for all Gnostic teachers and groups in the era of classical Gnosticism; thus one who adheres to some or all of them today might properly be called a Gnostic:

The Gnostics posited an original spiritual unity that came to be split into a plurality.

As a result of the precosmic division the universe was created. This was done by a leader possessing inferior spiritual powers and who often resembled the Old Testament Jehovah.

A female emanation of God was involved in the cosmic creation (albeit in a much more positive role than the leader).

In the cosmos, space and time have a malevolent character and may be personified as demonic beings separating man from God.

For man, the universe is a vast prison. He is enslaved both by the physical laws of nature and by such moral laws as the Mosaic code.

Mankind may be personified as Adam, who lies in the deep sleep of ignorance, his powers of spiritual self-awareness stupefied by materiality.

Within each natural man is an "inner man," a fallen spark of the divine substance. Since this exists in each man, we have the possibility of awakening from our stupefaction.

What effects the awakening is not obedience, faith, or good works, but knowledge.

Before the awakening, men undergo troubled dreams.

Man does not attain the knowledge that awakens him from these dreams by cognition but through revelatory experience, and this knowledge is not information but a modification of the sensate being.

The awakening (i.e., the salvation) of any individual is a cosmic event.

Since the effort is to restore the wholeness and unity of the Godhead, active rebellion against the moral law of the Old Testament is enjoined upon every man.⁶

The noted sociologist Max Weber wrote in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism that "the perfect conceptual definition cannot stand at the beginning, but must be left until the end of the inquiry." That is what we have done in the present inquiry also. Emery's twelve points are in every consistent with the proposal set out by the colloquium at Messina. Second-century Gnosticism is taken as the principal model for all of these definitions, a practice that appears to be sensible. Nor is any separate recognition given to any so-called "orthodox gnosis" that is occasionally alluded to, more as a figure of speech than as any discernible historical phenomenon, in the writings of some of the Church Fathers who were contemporaneous with the Gnostics. It would seem that whatever is excluded by Emery's definitions and the protocol of Messina may be more profitably considered from doctrinal perspectives other than Gnostic.

Whatever the value of this line of inquiry, at least it calls attention to definitions that are historically unimpeachable and terminologically definite. This is much more than the current literature - especially of the semipopular variety - possesses. Divisive categorizations that separate "false Gnostics" from "authentic Gnostics," especially on the basis of orthodoxies which were never relevant to either Gnosticism or the Gnostics, may have to be discarded in the light of such definitions. The random projection of contemporary fads and enthusiasms (such as feminism and the Gaia hypothesis) onto Gnosticism might also have to be controlled. But all of this seems like a small price to pay for some order and clarity in this field. We might have to take to heart the ironic admonition of Alice in Wonderland:

When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said,…"it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

The article first appeared in Gnosis: A Journal of Western Inner Traditions (Vol. 23, Spring 1992),
and is reproduced here by permission of the author.

Notes

Ioan P. Culianu, "The Gnostic Revenge: Gnosticism and Romantic Literature," in Gnosis und Politik, Jacob Taubes, ed. (Munich: W. Fink, 1984), p. 290; quoted in Arthur Versluis, "'Gnosticism,' Ancient and Modern," in Alexandria 1 (1991), pp. 307-08.

Charles A. Coulombe, "Solovyev: Gnostic or Orthodox?", New Oxford Review, November 1991, pp. 28-29.

Richard Smith, "The Modern Relevance of Gnosticism," in James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library, third edition (San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1988), pp. 532-49.

Ibid., pp. 540-41.

Giovanni Filoramo, A History of Gnosticism (Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1990) p. xiv.

Clark Emery, William Blake: The Book of Urizen (Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1966), pp. 13-14.

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What Is Revelation?

Principles Embedded in Myth

Invitation To Explore More:

What Is a Gnostic?

What Is a Gnostic?

A Political Confusion

Traditionalist Difficulties

Academic Ambiguities

Psychological and Existentialist Models

Toward Definition

The article first appeared in Gnosis: A Journal of Western Inner Traditions (Vol. 23, Spring 1992), and is reproduced here by permission of the author.

The article first appeared in Gnosis: A Journal of Western Inner Traditions (Vol. 23, Spring 1992),
and is reproduced here by permission of the author.