/lit/ - Literature

Excellent relation to the idea and prose here

>>16092074
Oops

Good relation to a cultural icon.

>>16092030
> They posited that God, the supreme being, was not responsible for the material world. Rather, a lesser imperfect creature created humanity, the Demiurge.

Where is the proofs though?

What if the demiurge isn’t a literal existing being, but something more akin to “maya” in Hinduism, that is, a delusion? We are all rooted from the singular mind of God and we have deluded ourselves into thinking we are individuals existing in a material universe. This material delusion is where other delusions, like the false concept of a tyrannical, dualistic demiurge god come from.

We are Atman, God is Brahman. If we are to rejoin God, we must shed our delusions of self, and transcend the demiurge (material reality) for the Truth, for the material is but a shadow of it

>>16092092
I think they point out the suffering in the world as the biggest indicator. I've heard some use Genesis 6 as the origin of humanity: the ability of spiritual perfection from immaterial sons of God combined with the material dependence and nature of sin from the daughters of man.

>The term gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnōsis, which means knowledge. Gnostics are those who are "in the know." And what is it that they know? They know secrets that can bring salvation. For gnostics, a person is saved not by having faith in Christ or by doing good works. Rather, a person is saved by knowing the truth—the truth about the world we live in, about who the true God is, and especially about who we ourselves are. In other words, this is largely self-knowledge: Knowledge of where we came from, how we got here, and how we can return to our heavenly home. According to most gnostics, this material world is not our home. We are trapped here, in these bodies of flesh, and we need to learn how to escape. For those gnostics who were also Christian (many gnostics were not), it is Christ himself who brings this secret knowledge from above. He reveals the truth to his intimate followers, and it is this truth that can set them free.

For anyone here I recommend you to check out The Modern Hermeticist on youtube. He makes some amazing lectures and audiobooks related to western esoteric traditions. This one especially relates to Gnosticism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSp5TYEDYwU

>>16092113
>250x384
anon please

>>16092141
2 minutes in, seems like good stuff. Thanks for sharing anon.

>>16092092
Where is the proofs for what conciousness is? Neuroscience can tell us how it breaks, but that's about it.

Anesthesiologists today really don't know if their drugs make people lose their conciousness, or just immobilize them and make them have amnesia. Being cognizant during surgery is not that uncommon. We can't tell if someone is unconscious because we don't know what conciousness is. I have a degree in neuroscience and it's easy to think you know a lot as you get into the field, but as you learn more, you realize how very little we know.

Where are proofs for determinism or free will? Neither can be proved.

Gnosticism is a philosophical argument about the nature of the hard problem of conciousness and pure ideas. It isn't something you could "prove" like you would "orthodox" Christianity with its creator God.

For folks like the guy capped here
>>16092086
Material existence is Yaldaboath. Maybe it's wrong to personify him, but material is where we find limits on ideas. I get what he is laying down.

When will you all just accept that Jesus is the begotten Son of YHWH?

>>16092214
>hard problem of conciousness
Sad to say, I got a dual degree in philosophy and psychology from a pretty good school and did not know this term until recently.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

I guess I see how Gnosticism is a tie in and tries to explain it.

>>16092229
>why don’t you accept that Jesus is the son of a murder and a liar?
the two are nothing alike. The father of Christ should not be compared with a spirit that does blatant evil

>>16092030
>Gnostic ideas show up in Plato
Wrong. Study the subject of a thread before making it. Stop associating platonism with what is utterly contrary to it.

>>16092324
>Let me act heavily dismissive and produce zero argument, that'll show him.
Not him, not a gnosisfag, but if you don't think Gnostics were building of Plato and inverting him you have no idea about Plato's work or Gnosticism.

They are playing off the same main theme, that of the world of forms versus the world of reality. That mismatch predates Plato though (notably in proximity in the Pythagoreans), but also in ancient Egyptian and Hindu thought.

It got deleted? But the booktuber threads and pedobait Lolita threads stay up 'til the cows come home.

>>16092324
Gnosticism is literally Platonism with no teleology...

>>16092111
This is the Valentinian position. The world is Sophia's materialized ignorance, fear, anguish, terror. There is no Satanic Demiurge in the Valentinian system.

>>16092030
whats the best text to start with? i made a thread about this a week or two ago but it was mostly just me shitposting until it died. it seems like there's been a bunch of new important additions to the "gnostic canon" in the past 15 years, so a lot of the books are somewhat out-of-date?

>>16092324
They definitely do, there's massive Platonic influence in the Sethian traditions, and the Platonic distinction between matter and the intelligible is THE gnostic distinction.

>>16092403
Most gnostic traditions are eschatological.

>>16092086
please don't tell me that is /sci/'s berzerkfag, guy is the dumbest human being to ever walk the planet. i can literally hear his response now
>rent free

>>16092430
The distinction is between the intelligible and the unintelligible, obviously not restricted to platonism. Plato calls matter Nurse, Mother in Timaeus.

>>16092394
What is gnostic in platonism, the greek letter for craftsman?

>>16092468
greek word*

>>16092416
Okay, I got you. Stay away from the meme new age Jungian Gnogisticm Monad Kybalion We're All One Broo meme shit. I might create my own gnostic reading chart soon.

In this order:

Jacques Lacarriere - The Gnostics (quick and snappy. literary analysis of the gnostic temperament, beautiful work if you can stomach his characteristically French sympathy for the libertines)

Hans Jonas - The Gnostic Religion (the big kahuna, an absolute treasure and joy to read, decidedly more scholarly but not in the least bit dry)

Kurt Rudolph - Gnosis (the meat and potatoes imo, very tight, dense language, lots of quotations, lots of material, might just be my favorite book on the subject)

Couliano - The Tree of Gnosis (maybe even denser than Rudolph's, more polemic than any work so far, but a ton of information you might not find anywhere else)

Filoramo - A History of Gnosticism (palette cleanser, more of a beginner's book but just as tight, short but punchy overviews of a lot of topics. after the gauntlet that is Rudolph and Couliano you'll appreciate this.)

I've yet to read any current works that aren't bone dry and just way too scholarly and autistic for my tastes, but I'm sure I'm wrong.

>>16092468
>The distinction is between the intelligible and the unintelligible, obviously not restricted to platonism. Plato calls matter Nurse, Mother in Timaeus.

No, it isn't, it came from Egypt. Ptah speaks the Egyptian equivalent of the Logos in the Memphite theology. Then Plato takes that up to mean a benevolent Demiurge. Then the gnostic invert it.

>>16092402
Archons gonna arch

>>16092490
>I've yet to read any current works that aren't bone dry and just way too scholarly and autistic for my tastes, but I'm sure I'm wrong.
interdasting, are the newer gnostic texts just not that important in the grand scheme of things or are we kind of just waiting for a novel seminal work?

>>16092030
Seethe and cope gnostlet

>>16092111
I think that is/was a popular interpretation.

At least, they're not ever talking about a literal lion headed snake eating people

>>16092490
Also, Elaine Pagels has written a lot on Gnosticism.

>>16092416
Actually this lecture here >>16092141 would be a great way to start

>>16092522
I tried to read John Turner's book on Sethianism. Don't get me wrong, these are brilliant men and women who know their shit, but so far they just lack a certain panache... which is why I love Jonas and recommend starting with Lacarriere. It's about a mentality, a way of intuiting things. For guys like Turner it doesn't seem to be a lifestyle for them. Studying Gnosticism is, but Gnosticism itself? Doesn't seem like it.

I read Voices of Gnosticism which features a ton of interviews with contemporary scholars. It was interesting, but so, so, so much of it was talking dates and the relation of Christianity to this, and what about the relation of the Church to that, and eeeehhhh

>>16092468
Wait, are you really trying to argue the the Gnostics weren't influenced by Plato and their ideas share nothing in common?

>>16092544
I'm trying to offer an introduction to gnosticism as a mode of understanding and even possibly a lifestyle, Pagels is only the perfect introduction to gnostic scholarship which I'm honestly just not interested in.

Ask Pagels if she has a relationship to Sophia, or how she'd relate the evils of the world to her own personal understanding of Evil/the Demiurge, and watch her just blink and laugh.

Just FYI: if this thread gets deleted but that Lolita pedobait thread stays up, I'm gonna leave /lit/ forever.

Does gnosticism always claim the material world is evil? It is clearly imperfect, but must it always been seen as evil?
Hinduism has the idea of a creator tasked by God to create many realms, each imperfect, as only God can create perfection, but greater and lesser in their level of imperfection, even the hellish realms are not seen as evil ,simply a home for evil beings.

>>16092490
Jung is great though, why? He isn't light new age fare.

>>16092624
No, the world has a divine origin in Manichaeism. It features probably one of the few examples of a demiurge whose origin is the light, as opposed to the Kingdom of Darkness.

But no, I don't think any gnostic buys emanationism straight through.

>>16092624
It doesn't. In some texts the demiurge is evil, but he is often seen as incompetent. The ideas the Gnostics inherited via Plato came to him from the Orphics, and we can trace them back to Egypt where it seems they may have come from India, so the similarities make sense.


Anyhow, post Gnostic related literature, pic related.

>>16092628
>Evola thinks that C. G. Jung, who popularized the psychological approach, conceded too much to modernity and its denial of the transcendent. For Evola, true alchemy was a technology of initiation, involving mental exercises and physical substances, that allowed the adept to achieve immortality, indeed godhood. The interesting thing about this interpretation is how neatly it fits into the broad outlines of 20th-century philosophy.
>his treatise on alchemy, La Tradizione ermetica (The Hermetic Tradition). Such was the scope and depth of this work that Carl Jung even quoted Evola to support his own contention that, “the alchemical opus deals in the main not just with chemical experiments as such, but also with something resembling psychic processes expressed in pseudo-chemical language.” Unfortunately, the support expressed by Jung was not mutual, for Evola did not accept Jung’s hypothesis that alchemy was merely a psychic process.

>>16092665
I loved Valis.

Pic related. THE gnostic sci-fi.

What's the gnostic view on masturbation?

>>16092497
Nobody is talking about the origins of platonism. That it is of egyptian origin it is obvious you autist. Now what you are saying is literally that contrariety is affinity.

>>16092584
What do they share in common? Belief in immaterial? Soul, Intellect, Spirit being superior to the ''material'' (corporeal)? What kind of spirituality does not pose this? What did platonism not influence?

>>16092563
obliged, been listening to it. great stuffs so far

>>16092564
>it doesn't seem to be a lifestyle for them
i get what u mean, ahh, ss'd the list. thank ya kindly anon. exciting times still

>>16092697
Didn't the gnostics have a lot of gay/anal sex to control their sexual desires so they wouldn't procreate?

>>16092707
No?

>>16092697
The demons in Mani's system are literally the ur-coomers. So, yeah, nah nigga don't do it.

Why do so many gnostics latch onto the idea of having some divine power to blame for their problems and not realize this religion is like buddhism in which it is 95% practice.

>>16092697
the meat deserves to be beat

Posting a gnostic graphic novel. Don't let the art turn you away, writing more than makes up for it.

http://www.gnosis.org/littleworldmade/Finch-Little-World-sm.pdf

>>16092719
>Celibacy in the Cathars and related Gnostic groups had a very specific meaning, it meant non-reproduction and avoiding sex with those who were outside the community. It did not mean never having sex at all. The tendency towards celibacy in modern Gnostic schools at times borders on neurosis and a fear of the body, rather than on real spiritual foundations. The Cathars advocated the use of contraception, abortion and anal sex (the term Bugger comes from the name Bogomil, the Bavarian predecessors to the Cathars) so that the general members (Credentes) could avoid having children

>>16092721
I'm happier and more content than I've ever been, and it's only now that the gnostics started making sense. Posts like this have become exceedingly tiresome.

>>16092721
well reality is nothing but a big suck for many an intelligent person and it sure isnt my fault

>>16092721
>Why do so many gnostics latch onto the idea of having some divine power to blame for their problems
Because they're too afraid of Old Testament truths

>>16092744
cool. Start a spiritual practice.

>>16092734
>listening to church slander

kek.

>>16092697
There were extremely ascetic sects but also some sects like the paternians who believed that the flesh was the work of the devil and so indulged in all manner of debauchery.

>>16092771
sexual tantra has a place in the gnostic system

>>16092734
No original Gnostic texts were available until the 1940s due to extreme repression. The Cathars came centuries later. I don't know if we can take the words of heretic hunters at face value.

>>16092803
I believe we had the Codex Brucianus (sp?) and the Pistis Sophia by around 1910ish for both. But yeah you're basically right.

>>16092756
but they accept the truths, they just don't necessarily attribute goodness to the acts

>>16092665
>>16092696
What about Gnostic anime?

What should a gnostic practitioners mind be focused on at all times?
For Hindus/Christians/Sihks they focus the mind on God.
Buddhists focus on the present moment.
What should a gnostic focus on?

>>16092846
>What should a gnostic focus on?
They should focus on learning to accept the truth that the God of the Old Testament is the same God of the New Testament.

>>16092842
I'd say Evangelion is anti-gnostic, with SEELE itself being a caricature of world-hating gnostics who want to return everything to the froth of the Pleroma.

How about some gnostic comic books? Pic related: The Invisibles.

>>16092846
God, the Monad.

>>16092865
a house divided against itself will not stand. the will of the son of the father are one. if Jesus was so radically different from the god of the Old Testament, being the total opposite of him, how could he possibly be his son? Solution: the god of the Old Testament is a falsehood

>>16093029
John 1:10
>He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
Jesus made the world. It wasn't le ebil demiurge.

>>16093045
>using the Gospel of John to refute a gnostic interpretation of the Bible

ahahahah oh no no no ahahaha. it's the most crypto-gnostic text in the canon, besides maybe some of paul's letters.

>>16093062
>the Gospel that explicitly says that Jesus created the world and that salvation is of the Jews is gnostic
no

>>16093045
Jesus created the universe and the state of existence, but the demiurge is a perversion of the truth of god. The demiurge is the material god of the world that represents the death that is in it. Jesus being the Logos in John 1 doesn’t equate him with the demiurge in the slightest

>>16092842
Berzerk ofc tho not exclusively

>>16093084
>Jesus being the Logos in John 1 doesn’t equate him with the demiurge in the slightest
Because there is no demiurge. God (Jesus) created the heavens AND the earth.

>>16093096
and the demiurge isn’t supposed to be a literal being, it’s the personification of a false image of god. The idea that a true and loving god (the one Jesus represents) would ever select a specific group of people and use them to cause harm to other children that he created, is a falsehood. Stop equating Jesus with a fucking murderer

>>16093096
No, John explicitly identifies God with the Logos. Philo's Logos acts as an intermediary principle between God and his Creation. Gnostics take it one step further.

Logos creates the world = Demiurge creates the world.

>>16093116
>the demiurge isn’t supposed to be a literal being, it’s the personification of a false image of god.
Is that something that all or even most gnostics agree on?
>>16093118
But Jesus is the Word. John 1:14
>And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

Can christcuckolds actually be reasoned with? Seems like most of them are too far lost in their demiurgic egregores to be worth engaging with. They usually just drag discussions down with their mundane misunderstandings, attempts to convert others to submitting towards their false god and general spiritual retardation.

>>16092416
Davies' translation of the Apocryphon Johannes
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/apocjn-davies.html

>>16093159
not that guy but words means logos so you guys seem to be in agreement

>>16092624
the impression that i get (granted ive only really read the Apocryphon,, the gospel of thomas, the hypostases of the archons) is that the material world isnt EVIL but it is full of suffering and it is separate from Sophia, so it is therefore substandard

>>16093199
How can Jesus and the demiurge both create the world if they are not one and the same?

>>16093216
the apocyphon and hypostases are sethian material, Ialdabaoth is a satanic figure in it and the world is indeed evil. Gospel of Thomas isn't even properly anything, besides very beautiful.

>>16093219
the point is that a gnostic would be inclined to decouple God from Logos and demote the latter, a Christian would keep the distinction (only minimally) and identify Christ with the Word. which also means identifying Christ with the OT God, which is lol

What's the gnostic view of the afterlife?

>>16093331
a final trial and ascent through the spheres/watch-stations of the Archons. if you make it, you're reunited with your divine counterpart in the Fullness. if you don't, lol welcome earf

>>16093331
as with many gnostic ideals: conflicting. some say it's the traditional catholic ideal of "if you achieve gnosis have fun with logos, if you remained a hylic have fun going 5 layers down" some say it's a similar idea to samsara in which the soul is immortal and reincarnates until it reaches gnosis, uhhhh

>>16092691
Ebola doesn't hold a candle to jung, bud.

>>16093348
>reincarnating over and over again until you get it right
heh, this sounds absolutely horrifying

>>16093437
tell that to the buddhists!

>>16093355
Yet Jung quoted Evola in his book, while Evola considered Jung to be profane.

Can someone explain Sophia to me in greater detail? I gather that she is the 'lowest Aeon' of the divine, captive and tormented by the archons of the illusory materialverse. Is she the fragment of the divine that lives in every human soul? A double or syzygy to the Christ? A willing or coerced agent of the demiurge?

>>16093641
she's basically a hypostasis of divine reflexion, and instigator of the cosmic drama. interpretations of her vary. I think her literally as a fluctuation of energy in the primordial void that got caught on the loop of her own movement and imploded into our universe (transcendent Sophia), or a plasma life-form from the galactic center/pleroma that wandered too far into outside and got trapped there (immanent Sophia). but there are a million ways to think of it

>Archons
what were they thinking?

>also
Gnosticism is clearly an extreme idealist or anti-materialist philosophy. How could you reconcile these anti-materialist views with the new materialism of Deleuze, which revels in the flows, intelligences and drives of nonhuman universe?
> Is Deleuze an Archon?

>>16093697
the demiurge is the univocity of being. the plane that flattens everything into energy and force differentials.

gnostics don't deny matter exists, only that matter can be divine.

>>16092030
I was introduced to this via a book about the Albigensian crusades, don't know if I fully believe it, but I think it's an interesting idea, yes I am Christian, I am still debating myself if this world was created to test us or as a prison, by the demiurge/satan.

>>16093582
Your statement does nothing to repudiate my statement. >>16093447

>>16093786
I too am a Christian, and Gnosticism is a hard ideology to refute, as it is the only other religion that acknowledges the truth of Jesus Christ (besides Mormonism, but that one's obviously false). The biggest thing that holds me back from following it is that Jesus never once claimed that the God that the Jews worshiped, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of King David and Solomon, is a false God, and that he came from a higher God. You could say that the Gospels got corrupted, or that the Apostles were just stupid and misinterpreted Jesus's message, but why wouldn't Jesus have made that point abundantly clear?

>>16092214
It's easier to belive in the holy gospel of neuroscience because it's honest enough to go "we don't really know, but our current best guess is..." versus the Gnostic idea of there being an incompetent nincompoop of a sub-god responsible for all our suffering.

>>16093875
He does, in the gospels that didn't make it the orthodoxy that has a vested interest in you not knowing this lol.

>>16093885
you lack the intuition to parse this stuff, sorry but it's true. how do I know? because you're a literalist who thinks gnostics think a snake with a lion's head invented neurochemistry.

>>16093889
w-what

>>16093889
But they were all written later. Mark was the first Gospel written, only 30 to 40 years after Jesus died, and never does it make any implication of Jesus being sent from a different God than the ones the Jews worship. And Gnosticism is real, why would the early church have kept this fact hidden? They already wanted to be separate from the Jews, at least most of them did, so why lie and say Jesus is actually the Son of the God the Jews worship?

>>16093895
I haven't even attempted to parse this stuff beyond memes like pic related. Where would I start in earnest?

>>16093937
*And if Gnosticism is real

>>16093946
there's some good material in this thread. some fiction, readings, recommendations.

>>16093928
sorry, I meant to say he does imply it in the gospels (like the Gospel of Judas) that WEREN'T absorbed into an orthodoxy that has no time or place for the notion that Christ came from a higher God

>>16093937
Paul doesn't mince words about being the kingdom of Satan. Even Satan doesn't mince words about the kingdom of Satan during Christ's temptation. He offers him the world, how can you offer that which you don't have? But the Church's survival has always depended on its endorsement by state power. They have to pander to worldlings or risk the withdrawal of that support.

Ye shall know them by their fruits. Find me a gnostic sect that burned hundreds of Catholics at the stake, I'll wait.

>>16093946
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/apocjn-davies.html this is one of the foundational texts and outlines a lot of the basic fundamental concepts of gnosticism. gnosis.org is a good resource in general

>>16093928
Not that guy, look into the apocrypha. The current bible is a relatively arbitrary selection of Christian texts. Anything too weird was thrown out and literally hunted down.

>>16093937
Too weird, too individual. Not as easy to be the big man with the right words to a crowd of people. Gnosticism was for people who can see, Christian Orthodoxy was for people who can only listen.

>>16093996
Why didn't Paul make it clear that the Jews worship the wrong God in any of his Epistles?
>He offers him the world, how can you offer that which you don't have?
Jesus's kingdom is of another world. I believe that Satan does have some power over this world, at least the power to tempt us. The weak fall victim to temptation, the strong resist it. Satan only offers Jesus meaningless temporary power. As it says in Ecclesiastes, all is vanity.
>But the Church's survival has always depended on its endorsement by state power
Except for the early church which had no political power, and were subject to persecution.

So you're telling me that I have to escape this evil spurdo world or else I'll reincarnate and come back? What happens if you spend too many "lives" here? Do you get progressively more and more rotten? Is this what people mean when they refer to traps in life? Things that lead you away from the correct route of knowledge and thus escape? Why is this idea so frightening? These threads are making me nervous.

>>16094052
>Except for the early church which had no political power, and were subject to persecution.

kek, and began persecuting gnostics right back when they were big cheese. and not even dissidents and rebels, but peace-loving cathars.

>Why didn't Paul make it clear that the Jews worship the wrong God in any of his Epistles?


did he have to spell it out for you? did you forget Marcion was an arch-heretic who loved Paul? who believed that before Christ, the world had never known the Father? Christianity could have been so beautiful, but kike subterfuge and weaklings destroyed it.

>>16094065
there are things in this world that will eat your soul. debased sexuality, violence, hunger, obsession, war, death, despair. there are demonic traps everywhere. in a way they're activated by your fear. you need a nobility of soul to see them for what they are without knowing them for what they are.

the texts themselves say different things about what happens after death. some are more optimistic, and believe that even those in the middle of the road will be redeemed in addition to the spiritual elect, others believe there are human races which are irredeemable and who are children of the demiurge even if they don't know it. generally, though, the idea is that there the mass is destined for perdition, while the elite escape.

>>16094075
>and began persecuting gnostics right back when they were big cheese
But why wasn't Gnosticism the main belief among the Apostles? The Apostles were the ones who knew Jesus, and they were the ones to spread Christianity to the Gentiles. It doesn't make sense for the Gentiles to then say that the Jewish God is the true God unless that's what the Apostles had told them.
>Marcion
Marcian was a Paul fanboy, but he was not Paul, and Paul never makes it clear that the Jews worship the wrong God.

>>16094101
I don't know, who cares? There's a million ways the message could have been suppressed, and if there was no message, again, who cares? Christ has nothing to do with the God of the OT, and if you think he does you're a fool.

>>16094091
I can't go to sleep after knowing this stuff. Is this why those monks out in the mountains talk about being tormented by literal demons? I don't want to come back and get stuck in some sort of reincarnation time loop. What the fuck is going on

>>16094065
The world is a prison and you can escape it by committing suicide

>>16094113
>I don't know, who cares?
Very compelling argument
>Christ has nothing to do with the God of the OT
Then why did he say he did, and why does he quote the OT so much? I understand not agreeing with everything in the OT, but wouldn't make more sense if the Jews who wrote the OT got some of it wrong, and that Jesus came to set it right? Some parts of the OT are very profound and truthful, and line up very well with Jesus's message.

>>16094139
>Is this why those monks out in the mountains talk about being tormented by literal demons?

yes. the forces in your body are powerful, starve them and they will not go down without a fight. until they finally do croak anyways.

it just comes down to being attached to the world, and being attached even to your aversion to your attachment. it's simple: death only kills what clings. that's it. that's what the ascent through the heavens of the Archons means: you pass the test of Venus is you can let go of your sexuality, the test of Mars your aggression, etc.

>>16094101
>Marcian was a Paul fanboy, but he was not Paul, and Paul never makes it clear that the Jews worship the wrong God.
you realize Paul wrote an entire book on how bad judaizing and keeping the old law was right? The veil of Moses? I’m pretty sure Paul saw the Jews as worshipping a falsehood of sorts

>>16094148
Because it's part of an orthodoxy that has a vested interest in getting you to believe he said it.

>Some parts of the OT are very profound and truthful, and line up very well with Jesus's message.

I'm pretty sure the Valentinians grant this, there is a God of the Law who authored the Ten Commandments and the YHWH the Desert God, who is the Demiurge.

>>16094149
>you pass the test of Venus is you can let go of your sexuality, the test of Mars your aggression
In what specific text are these mentioned? Preferably in some detail.

>>16094148
>Then why did he say he did
Jesus never identifies himself with YHWH, only “my father”, and it seems like “your father the devil” and “my father” have some big differences.
>and why does he quote the OT so much?
to expose the hypocrisy of those that practice it, to contradict its old law, and to show it’s futility?

>>16094149
>test of Venus is you can let go of your sexuality, the test of Mars your aggression, etc.
please elaborate

>>16094171
no text that I know of puts it in those terms, but it's pretty easy to parse. see the ophite cosmology for example. or the hermetic descent of man, as he falls into nature the planets implant him with their modules. or in the secret book of john where different demons are responsible for designing different body parts and organs - and so dying means being able to "give back" these demonic implants to their source, or risk being chained to them for another round or maybe even forever.

the section on Death in Filoramo's book on the gnostics covers it pretty well. unfortunately there are no pdfs of it anywhere. do you want me to type up the relevant passage? it's really cool and actually a little bit scary.

>>16094160
>Because it's part of an orthodoxy that has a vested interest in getting you to believe he said it.
But why would they have that vested interest?
>>16094179
John 8:39-41
>They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.
Right before saying the Father of the Jews is the devil, he said that they don't follow the way of Abraham. The God of Abraham is YHWH
>to expose the hypocrisy of those that practice it, to contradict its old law, and to show it’s futility?
But when Jesus quotes the OT, he does it to say that that is what the Jews should be doing

>>16094216
>But why would they have that vested interest?
because let's forget the ooga booga evil church narrative for a bit: because people are fucking terrified of having to believe that they exist in a prison built by a malevolent god. or at the very least a bumbling one. that shit weighs heavy on a nigga

>>16094192
>do you want me to type up the relevant passage?
Please do, I'd like to see it.

>>16094216
>Right before saying the Father of the Jews is the devil, he said that they don't follow the way of Abraham. The God of Abraham is YHWH
Yeah because Abraham himself experienced God, he didn’t experience it the same way anyone proceeding from him did, and those after him were subject to falsehoods. If something didn’t go wrong SOMEWHERE in the line of the Old Testament, Jesus wouldn’t have incarnated to rectify it. Ultimately, this proves nothing. It only goes further to prove that the god that 99.9% of Jews worshipped and believed in was a corrupted image of the truth
>But when Jesus quotes the OT, he does it to say that that is what the Jews should be doing
to expose their hypocrisy and futility of the law

>>16094227
>because people are fucking terrified of having to believe that they exist in a prison built by a malevolent god
I still don't believe that the Apostles would go around spreading a message that they knew was false. If they feared the truth so much, it would make more sense for them to spread nothing at all than to spread a lie
>>16094248
>It only goes further to prove that the god that 99.9% of Jews worshipped and believed in was a corrupted image of the truth
But it proves that the God of Abraham, YHWH, is true.
>to expose their hypocrisy and futility of the law
Which would mean that there is truth to the Old Testament. Are you sure you aren't just a Christian?

>>16094180
Here is the passage from the Filoramo book, I think you'll find it useful. Just remember that in every man there exists the counterfeit spirit, which is basically his own little piece of the Demiurge:

>What happens to the person in a coma? Is it possible to photograph (or, in more fortunate cases, to interview those who have experienced) the moments before the great irretrievable step and to understand the state of mind and the thoughts that accompany them? Reduced to arid scientific curiousity, or worse, to the publicity hype of a new 'bestseller', it may appear simply as a further act of cruelty to an invalid who has become a guinea pig. But in terms of religious history it takes on a more human light and a different cultural dimension. It is the theme of the Zwischenzustand, the twilight zone, those eternal moments, the fine bridge between time and its cessation, an area explored and wonderfully described by so many religious spirits. It is enough to glance through that extraordinary volume, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, to detect some surprising aspects, of relevance to the contemporary situation. The central theme is that of the bard: a minute, lucid, almost obsessive, analysis of the representative states violating inexorably and mercilessly the aseptic moment of transition. Buddhist meditation has rigorously analysed them and ordered them hierarchically in a sort of spiral; and it is necessary to ascend this spiral, with all its menace, in order to reach the desired goal: the final abandonment of those illusions (however vivid and resistant) against which humans are called to fight and the resulting dissolution of those representations (menacing, but captivating) that, in the Renaissance Books of the Dead, are translated into endless struggles between devils and angels on the bed of the dying and the lost and the helpless.

>Even our Gnostics recognized this singular challenge. Their ascents of the soul, the celestial journeys awaiting the souls immediately after death, are the most illuminating example of how they experienced the intermediate stage.

(1/2)

What happens after death in the gnostic worldview?

>>16094180
>>16094247
A passage from the Hermetic account:

>First, at the dissolution of the material body you surrender this same body to change, and the form you have disappears, and you surrender your character to the demon, now ineffectual. And the bodily senses return, each to their own sources; they become seperate parts and are compounded again for effectiveness. And passion and desire go into the irrational nature. And so the creature then goes upwards through the harmony of the spheres; and in the first circle it gains the capacity to grow and to diinish; in the second evil machinations, guile, unexercised; in the third the deceit of lust, again unexercised; in the fourth the ostentation of command … not exploited; and in the fifth impious boldness and the rashness of audacity; in the sixth the evil urges for riches, unexercised, in the seventh the lurking lie.

There's obviously more. It's a good book.

>>16094289
It's also just possible the Apostles didn't understand Christ's message, and that is a big running theme in the Thomas and Judas.

>>16094300
>>16094327
intredasting

>>16094351
Why wouldn't Jesus make his message abundantly clear though? At least to his Apostles

>>16094360
that’s the question to be asking about the entire bible tho

>>16094360
He probably did and they still didn't get it. Dog he's supposed to be communicating the highest mysteries of the world, the self, God, reality, being and non-being, these are THE ur-truths of all Being, even Christ's apostles become gibbering brainlets in the face of such a revelation. But these are just hypotheticals. My intuition tells me Christ came from a God who was "hitherto unknown" before his ministry.

>>16094320
>do you have your gnosis hallpass?
>no? get back to class and go get one buddy