/lit/ - Literature

Why are you still here?

>>16708290
Lmao you wasted a whole year of your life and now you want us to affirm your autism ? Find a hobby dude

>>16708290
Are the gnostic texts entertaining?

>>16708290
Please name one (1) verse from the Bible that mentions Sophia, the Demiurge, or other Gnostic constructs.

How does it feel to have wasted a year on irl d&d lore

>>16708290
dont you think its retardedly useless to think the material world is "hell", i presume it's the basic take of gnostics, a cheeky platonism.

>>16708290
Is yhvh yaldabaoth?

How does it feel to know this nigga destroyed all your obscurantist nonsense 1800 years ago?

what is gnosticism? what's the point of reading about it?

>>16708303
I don't like coming here anymore. /lit/ is filled with insecure teenagers and 20 somethings jockeying for status.

>>16708310
Some of them are astoundingly beautiful. Instead of the Gospel of Thomas or Gospel of Truth, read some obscure ones like The Teachings of Sylvanus or Treatise on the Resurrections. Without a good grounding in secondary sources you're bound to interpret them as "New Age", which the gnostic temperament couldn't be farther from.

>>16708311
Sophia:

>In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1

Logos here is the principle of mediation that comes "between" God and his creative act. Reminiscent of the Philonic Logos, which Platonized Genesis by positing the Word as something that (benevolently) intervenes between God's creative power and the product of that power. Its deep ancestor is the Memphite theology of Egypt, where Ptah speaks the creative word that mediates between the Sun-God and Creation. There are also references to Sophia - God's Wisdom - as the right hand of YHWH in the OT. There is some equivocation between Logos, Sophia, and Demiurge here, but the groundwork is all there.

Demiurge:

>For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Ephesians 6:12

Clear reference to the existence of dark powers that rule the world. The earth is the dominion of demons.

>other gnostic constructs

Marcion's go-to was a "bad tree cannot produce good fruit, a good tree cannot produce bad fruit", which directly contradicts Isaiah 45:7.

>>16708385
No, I meant "here." In the material world.

>>16708348
there are many, many definitions. I'll avoid the scholarly autism and propose my own: a tradition that takes the suffering of the finite subject/animal/even plant (if you're a Manichaean) as the only valid condition of truth. from there, an inner knowledge of what must be true for finite beings to protest against the conditions of their cosmic enslavement follows into an inner knowledge of the True God.

>>16708317
No, it's an inverted platonism. Every day millions if not billions of beings are eaten by beings who will be eaten in turn, either by predators or the dust from whence they came. no thoughtful, mature person can call this creation harmonious or somehow evolving towards a final perfection.

>>16708311
why should I trust the Bible that was compiled specifically to conform to the beliefs of people that hated Gnostics?

>>16708327
if you ask Marcion, yes, YHWH is a petty idiot-God who means sort of well but can't help but tyrannize his hapless children with the "Law", or more specifically, the burden of negentropy.

>>16708424
>there are many, many definitions. I'll avoid the scholarly autism and propose my own: a tradition that takes the suffering of the finite subject/animal/even plant (if you're a Manichaean) as the only valid condition of truth. from there, an inner knowledge of what must be true for finite beings to protest against the conditions of their cosmic enslavement follows into an inner knowledge of the True God.
Simplify it. Tell it to me as if I were a retarded toddler. Because that description was just word salad for me.

>>16708290
Do you think El Elyon was a different god worshipped by Abraham and Yahweh (the Lord God) a different one that was adopted by Moses? I find it interesting how Jesus tends to criticize Moses and the law but doesnt levy the same attitudes towards Abraham.

Also, what do you figure of Jesus saying “I have come to fulfill the law?”. I can only think that “the law” isn’t the mosaic law but the law which he sums up as: “Love God and love another as you love yourself.” Everything in the sermon on the mount fulfills the latter law but contradicts the mosaic law.

Is gnosticism influencial today in any ways?

studying this (or any other esoteric tradition) is literally just astrology for incels

>>16708448
Retarded take

>>16708448
>incels
Consider suicide because you clearly don't know wtf you're talking about

>>16708317
>dont you think its retardedly useless to think the material world is "hell"
And why's that? It's not any more or less retarded than when you're calling one thing by another's name, if that earlier thing has the necessarity qualities for it to be deemed as (at least some variation of) the latter.

>>16708445
Gnosticism is the idea that creation is flawed, perhaps even evil, and therefore hostile to all noble spirits.

>>16708446
"Fulfill" can mean "complete", as in, complete and do away with forever, rendering it unnecessary. I'm just not really interested in a gnostic exegesis of the Bible. I think the gnostic temperament transcends Christianity much to the dismay of scholars like Petremont. For example, Mani's creation myth has direct parallels with the Orphic creation myth.

As for your first question, intertestamental Jews are considered the source of "classical" or Sethian gnosticism. it's safe to say whatever gnostic religiosity the Hebrews possessed, it was disseminated through these heretical strains of thought rather than residing anywhere in the orthodoxy.

>>16708447
Yes. If you listen to Voegelin (I don't), modernity is an immanentized gnosticism. I'd rather listen to Blumenberg: modernity isn't the fulfillment of whatever tendencies were latent in the gnostic schools of the 2nd-3rd centuries, it's actually a compromise with the fact that its dualism cannot be refuted. more to the point, it's a compromise with the fact that the possibility of us being slaves of a demonic god is just too much to bear for the majority of humanity. terrified by that possibility, Descartes could only fall back on his cogito, and from there the rest is history.

>>16708476
>Gnosticism is the idea that creation is flawed, perhaps even evil, and therefore hostile to all noble spirits.
Huh. That's funny. For me the latter definition you gave made a lot more sense. This one, though, just makes things confusing...

>>16708290
are you a virgin?

>>16708496
Could you explain that a little more? What do by you mean by its dualism? What has descarte to do with it? Thanks for the informative post I'll chech them out

>>16708307
1. Sinning is a hobby.
2. AMA is a challenge, not a request for a pat on the head.

>>16708448
Astrology is PART of the esoteric tradition you fucking numbskull.

>>16708290
Tell of some of its obscure stuffs.

>>16708646
I will try to simplify. The idea is that gnosticism claims knowledge of the deep workings of reality much like moderns do. The scientific instinct is "gnostic" because it tries to expose, challenge, and subvert creation. This is what Voegelin believes.

Blumenberg says that instead modernity is not the fulfillment of this gnostic impulse, but the failure to come to terms with it. there is nothing that can ever definitively prove Descartes' demon isn't real and that everything is an illusion. Descartes demon is a demiurge: a god of deceit. Descartes can't refute the demon, but he can't refute the fact that he is terrified of the demon either. there is something OTHER than the demon, and that is the dualism between the cogito and a (presumably) illusory universe (I'm working off a reading of Cartesian doubt as being filled with the same anxiety and terror of an anti-divine Other that Job was: it wasn't just a quaint thought experiment asking what if nothing aint real broo). from there, the rest is history.

the point is simply that it makes no sense to think modernity is gnostic because the possibility we are all slaves of an evil demonic god is too fucking much for people. the best we can do is assert our irreducible, atomic individuality in the face of such a reality and get on with the work of society - which is exactly what Descartes and the heirs of his subjectivism ultimately do. they compromise with the world, they do not negate it, like a gnostic would.

>>16708829
Gnosticism is "left-handed", any so-called "gnostic" who tells you we're supposed to merge with some pantheistic All is a liar and a cheat. Gnosticism is about ABSOLUTE INDIVIDUATION, not SELF-DISSOLUTION.

The right-hand path is the demiurgic path, because it's about sinking back into mindless chaos, the void, Space. Left-hand path is hyperborean, it's about becoming a star, a drop that drinks the ocean.

>>16708496
>>16708428
>>16708424
>>16708385
gnostic 4channers are so stupid they cant even understand what the gnostic myth conveys. they are the protestants of esotericism with their literality hahahahahahahahahha

>>16708290
Is there a non-Semitic approach to Gnosticism?

>>16708290
Gnosticism is for virgins. Hermeticism is for chads.
And no, before you or anyone says it THEY'RE NOT THE SAME FUCKING THING.

>>16708871
Every school is anti-semitic to an extent. Non-semitic? Maybe Mani and other fringe strains of thought today that might be considered "gnostic".

>>16708290
I'm also very interested in gnosticism.
I was born christian but never gave a shit.
I plan on reading the Bible then Plato's Complete Works and then Nag Hamadi.
Is this a good path ?

>>16708891
Save the Nag Hammadi for later. Read Hans Jonas' The Gnostic Religion. It is the greatest introduction to gnosticism I know of and it is still highly regarded in the field.

>>16708881
>Every school is anti-semitic to an extent
Yea that's not good enough, it's still using Semite topology. I'm talking something completely out of these parameters.
Will look up Mani.

how can gnosticism help in the fight against orcs and foreign invaders

>>16708862
You've got it all fucked up lol. To even BEGIN approaching the All one needs to be complete as a person and crystal clear as to one's purpose, far more than any degenerate left-hand type is ever capable of. Go back to your books.

>>16708881
>Every school is anti-semitic to an extent

good because i dont like skaven

>>16708948
The pleroma is not the All, it is acosmic. do not poison the beauty of these doctrines with your new age mush.

>>16708937
Some of the more obscure Sethian works, like Marsanes and Zostrianos are working with a Platonic topology as you put it. Valentinus is almost neo-Pythagorean and oriental.

As for contemporary gnostics, Baudrillard, Laruelle, Lindsay, and PKD have a gnostic temperament without the infatuation with heeb scriptures.

>>16708968
>simple truth that far predates Gnostic deviations
>New Age
ok

>>16709003
The fact that you're even bristling at what I said tells me you're still working within an unread and uninformed left hand vs. right hand dichotomy that doesn't deserve any consideration. This brand of American conspiratorial "occultism" has destroyed good, honest discussions far and wide.

>>16708862
WRONG.

Hermeticism is individuation.

>>16709021
You're trying to play gotcha with me on terms you used to begin with?

>>16709029
I used those terms to clarify what I mean but you're still hurling corny left hand vs. right hand stereotypes back at me. Also it's funny you think gnosticism is a deviation of this truth when proto-gnostic (or "gnosticoid") elements are present even in Egyptian theology. The destiny of the Pharaoh after death is NOT to sink into the dark ground of creation but to become a star, absolutely individuated, and sail with Re on his "bark of millions". None of you actually read.

>>16708290
>I spent a year doing nothing
you could've stopped there.

>>16708939
The awareness of the reality of Evil and its Archons should be enough to radicalize you if you are a spiritual male.

>>16709042
You used those terms before I even challenged your retarded take. Try again.

>>16708290
>I worship _.
Please fill in the blank (_).
Someone comes up to you and says
>I worship God
This person continues
>Do you worship God?
How do you reply?

>>16708290
>1 year
You are not even initiated, neophytus.

>>16709064
I worship the God who is not the God of this world.

>>16708902
>Hans Jonas' The Gnostic Religion
You don't happen to have an epub do you ?

>>16709093
http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=98626B533BBC864CA6157FCFE91CF68F

the best I can do

Was Goethe a Gnostic? I'm thinking especially about this verse in Faust: >>16708991

>>16709076
>this world
uuuuuhhhhmmmmm.....okay, pal
tell me about your aura
you want the rest of this joint?
*hands you a joint*

>>16709058
based. i believe that is correct. i see how fanatical libtards lash out against God, religion and Christians and it made me realize they are satans followers in actions, if not in name. then i started really seeing how evil they are and how much they twist the truth to serve their evil purposes

>>16709141
"libtards" are the useful idiot soldiers of the real demons that run the show. don't waste your energy on them. give the archons only as much mystique as they need to have to shake you out of your complacency.

>>16709141
No YOU are based :3

>>16709141
>lash out against God, religion, and Christians
how can you not love committing heresies

>>16709164
thats the feeling i get with the ant-fag-a riots. the terrorist libtards on the streets attacking innocent people and burning down buildings are enemies. the police that are alliwing and protecting them while they do this are also enemies.

the people financing the rioters and ordering the stand down from the police are worse. they think then can start a civil war and it will only be these pawns that get hurt. it would be nice to strike at these generals hidden in the dark

>>16709168
thanks fren

can you give me a rundown

How do you think gnosticism could specifically help ME an philosophy student that reads so much he barely has time to read.

>>16709188
Grow the fuck up you are a mental NIGGER!

>>16709188
i only commit hersey against the clown cult. you know like saying the foreign invasion is horrible for us economically or that orcs cause all violent crime and etc.

the clown cultist get very angry and ree that i have mocked their sacred cows

>>16709215
it isn't a self-help regimen, it's a way of understanding your relation to evil and suffering in the world.

>>16709211
Gnosticism is generally the belief that the universe is flawed, possibly evil, and hostile to noble spirits.

>>16709211
With piss or with shit?

>>16709229
>your relation to evil and suffering in the world
Ok. Something everybody cares about.

I will give you a short advise: On a serious topic like this fewer and better (means longer) replies should be at hand.

>>16709234
No, not something every body cares about, most people trivialize suffering or are insufferable urban monists. if you believe evil is real and the light is real and that for all eternity they will never and should never be reconciled, you might be interested in "gnosticism"

>>16709246
I have only read Abramelin, the Quran, some hadith, the black book , the Bhagavad Ghita, 200-300 books on european philosophy (mostky the big names) Theologica Theutsch and a few others I cant name any more. Jewish magic (all the "SEFERS")

Where should I start?

>>16709278
I forgot tabula smaragdina and the xxx, damn whats the name again...

I really learn way to much...

>>16709164
Hey, what do you think are some of the real demons? Is the pic related?

>>16709303
That would be some real reddit shit and I would disband this thread.

>>16708290
>>16708385
>>16708849
Do you have any solid arguments against non-dualism?

For anything which purports to not be of this world would still be defined by this world, thus included in the totality or "Tao". anything 'meta'-physical is defined by the physical. Try and define concioussness or being in anyway not reliant on memory or necessity, you will not succeed.

>>16709333
Dude just read descartres meditations.

>>16708290
How can you claim the theological legitimacy of any of these texts when they've all been written much later than canonical scripture?

>>16709340
ew

>>16708330
Quick rundown?

Will I ever find love?

>>16709355
Over the back or over the stomack?

>>16709164
>>16709058
Archons, Kings, Emperors are all slaves to the humble man.

>>16708877
Explain the difference

>>16709309
Not sure what you mean. I guess the pic conveys a general gnostic-like message of “simulated sunset” when read in a certain light.

I guess I’m wondering if you take demons to be literal demons or basically nothing without their concrete manifestations. I’m hot off reading a DFW interview on irony: so if we take irony as something one can get encaged in in a way that stops any real communication or even search for inner truth from occuring—how would that figure within a gnostic perspective?

>>16709278
Hans Jonas The Gnostic Religion. His Heideggerian pedigree shouldn't throw you any curve balls. It's also extremely readable. I know you'll like it.

>>16708864
seething

>>16709222
>clown heresy
I like how you think
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08083BNaYcA&list=PLLVTEDYnPVpgnUVaVKb8q5-FJQMa2vIXT

>>16709346
The Bible wasn't even canonized until after Marcion, who arguably organized the first canonical Bible.

>>16709446
Changes nothing to my point though.

>>16709434
Yes, actual demons, entities that thrive on pain, suffering, and the objectification/destruction of bodies. Once you lose the "one race the human race" rhetoric there's nothing committing you to some kind of spiritual brotherhood with humans who murder children or profit off death and suffering. The essence of their hungers is demonic. It couldn't be anything otherwise.

Irony is an urban phenomenon, when you're too disassociated from the realities of life and death your mind just becomes this caustic free play of weightless abstractions. Irony is a child's game. It is only for people who lack seriousness and purpose, which is why they mock anyone with "extreme" views or convictions.

Aside from "pain bad" what are the actual arguments for YHWH being an evil god?

>>16709466
Indeed it does, since you're talking about gnosticism deviating from an orthodoxy that didn't even exist yet. You're not one of those rubes who thinks the One True Church sprang fully-formed from Christ's head like Athena, are you?

>>16709484
The metabolic functions of organisms which demand that they consume, break down, and shit out other organisms until the True God rolls up the sky like a parchment and casts this dump into the pit it belongs.

Is OP still here?

>>16709478
>Yes, actual demons, entities that thrive on pain, suffering, and the objectification/destruction of bodies.

This is where dualism takes you, these exist, people like this exist. Also these impulses exist in this thing we call a polity. And powerful people are and always were involved, but who cares?

Generally speaking life is not like this, and we have far more to fear from abstract forces like capitalism and environmental degredation than from any individual player.

>>16709333
Good and evil are not complementary essences. I don't see harmony when I look around, do you? I see agon. Non-dualism is acosmic, cosmic non-dualism is corporatized mindfulness therapy tripe designed from the ground up to adapt society's lemmings to their shit lives.

>>16709490
>some books are dated very close to Christ's life
>they're canonical
>some are dated way later
>they are all coincidentally apocryphal texts that make wild claims on the life of Christ and theological principles
Care to explain?
It's safe to assume that the closer to a historical event something is, the more accurate it'll be.

>>16709513
You're wrong to assume a mature gnosticism doesn't take the system dynamics of, say, something like capitalism into account. The nature of evil in this universe is FORMAL (Demiurgic), while the derivatives of this Evil are obviously individual (Archons: sadists, human monsters).

>>16709518
Well see, it depends on how you define harmony. Sharks keep harmony in the oceans, our ideas about it makes it good or bad.

>>16708290
Your mom was pretty gnosis last night after sucking my demiurge.

>>16709518
I FUCKING LOVE MY SHIT LIFE

>>16709527
Nah, it's a harmony of violence, I'm tired of "it's our ideas that make it bad bro", life is demonstrably a negative phenomenon, if it wasn't it wouldn't need to feed on itself to sustain itself. Wake up and look around you. Spinoza was a mistake.


Evil is not a body imposing itself on another body (in whatever way), it's the FACT that bodies can impose on each other in the first place - that the good of one is evil for another. This is sadism at its root.

>>16709518
Then I'll trust the Gnostics like Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion, who were in the thick of the early Christian ferment than any clowns from Nicaea a hundred years later, let alone the Church now.

>>16709547
>Evil is not a body imposing itself on another body (in whatever way), it's the FACT that bodies can impose on each other in the first place

I could agree with you, but i have 1 (one) problem with this. You are applying an external measurment rod to the totality. There is no such external place. We are forever enclosed in the Dao. Thus every evil and every good is simply suchness.

There is no life there is no death, there is only life. Your life.

With this view in mind the correct way to be is compassionate, generous and joyful, for there is nothing else.

>>16709478
Thanks for clarifying. So it’s human individuals embodying super-human demonic forces. And the difference from Christianity would be that you see evil as a substance as opposed to just being a lack of light. Cool.

DFW says as much about irony. Good for critique but leads to emptiness of purpose. “The song of a bird that has come to love its cage”.

>>16709229
so what do we do

>>16708862
Isn't the left hand path inherently satanic?
Is the right hand path necessarily the dissolution of the self into the whole?
>>16709026
How so?

>>16709618
Yes, a substance, or at least something endowed with its own positive reality. Or to take a page from Zizek: a negativity with a spectral positivity, a lack that is something precisely for being a lack. In any case, Augustine was wrong. He was a bird who came to love his cage. I don't have any respect for him

>>16709624
Cultivate your identity with this light in you as you perceive it, and either find some way to take the fight to Evil or focus only on your own salvation.

>>16709686
The types of people who think individuation is satanic are the hylics and proles who live and die by the herd. There IS a satanic left-hand path but they are not the allies of these schools, they are just one more flavor of enemy. I do not worship evil, transgression, and blasphemy. I worship a light that tells me it isn't right to enslave others to your lust for life.

>>16709355
Irenaeus's Against the Heresies is well worth reading in its entirety, but basically he demolishes the Gnostic claim to offer true teaching that contradicts the official, public teaching of the church. The created world is not evil, it is basically good but infected by sin and evil. Salvation does not consist in escaping the material universe but in the redemption of creation through the death and resurrection of Jesus. Unlike the Gnostics, who are divided into many different sects that all teach different things and claim to be the truth, the Christian church teaches the same Gospel everywhere (this is obviously complicated somewhat by the schisms and divisions in Christianity today, but the basic point is still the same: the Gnostics offer a message that's constantly changing, but the Gospel as taught in Scripture and church tradition remains the same)> Christian teaching is public, not secret; anyone can learn about it and judge its validity for himself. It also doesn't make any sense to say Jesus taught some disciples some secret gnosis, since the church of Irenaeus's day (around 180) was really only a few generations removed from the apostles. If they had changed his message, or if Jesus had not entrusted them with the full revelation, someone would have noticed. Instead, apostolic tradition faithfully hands down the teachings of Christ, which are based in love and obedience to God, not in knowledge.

>>16709708
>the Christian church teaches the same Gospel everywhere
What is the core tenet of Christianity that has never been even slightly changed between time periods and schisms though?

>>16709686
> Is the right hand path necessarily the dissolution of the self into the whole?
no

>>16709697
evil is the raw input to the process that produces good
good is what has been imprinted with the God brand
this is a process of finding God by scent

>>16709708
Hahaha utterly refuted by the Church's own history. Words can't express how much I loathe parrots for you.

>>16709707
But individuation goes against Christian doctrine, does it not? Isn't henosis the final goal in Christianity? How do you even reconcile exoteric Christianity with individuation?

>>16709724
Good is self-produced, self-existent, anyone who tells you Good needs the condition of evil/darkness is a crypto-Hegelian or worse, a new ager. Reducing God to his process of self-emergence in history is truly what kills him, it isn't the Gnostics by any means.

>>16709731
You don't, unless you go digging for true blue mystics like Eckhart. Reconciling gnostic doctrine with exoteric Christianity is not my concern.

>>16709721
Explain

>>16709743
But gnosticism is heretical and to call God evil is blaspheme.

>>16708290
What does it mean when a skeleton lands on top of you seemingly out of nowhere?

>>16709445
i like it too anon. The most based thing you can do is mock and fight back against the clown cult. Turning their smugness into seething and crying; feels amazing.

>>16709756
No, it's Christianity that is heretical. They don't call God evil, they call a God who creates evil (and unequivocally says so, Isaiah 45:7) evil. Gnostics recognize a higher God who isn't constrained by the need to explain the savagery of nature or the evil of man in light of his goodness

>>16709776
>Christ is good
>but YHWH is bad
Matthew 5:17

>>16709719
>>16709726
The Church has never changed its doctrines and never will. Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus. Truth is clarified and brought to its full flower over the centuries (we would not say that an oak tree is different in essence from its acorn, though they may appear so to an observer), but the Gospel has never been altered.

>>16708290
Got a good reading list? I too would like to learn about gnosticism

>>16709734
>Good needs the condition of evil/darkness
oh, so you think it stays evil once it becomes good, is that it
that's like saying that cans of food in the grocery store retain their quality of "lacking a sticker" when you put price tag stickers on them
this is the process of selecting food to buy by checking if they have price tag stickers

>>16709518
>Good and evil are not complementary essences
Separate they cease to exist through loss of identification.
Even christian Gnosticism isn't exempt from the problem of evil.

>>16709796
>no need to test us
For Him.

>>16709788
Hans Jonas' The Gnostic Religion and Kurt Rudolph's Gnosis are potent. There's more if you want but that should get you startedm

>>16709792
I honestly don't know what you're trying to say.

>>16709796
Certainly Plotinus isn't. Where does matter come from? Why should the actualization of the One's All-Possibility include evil? Is not the One the condition of evil then, if not its author? The only airtight theodicies are Mani's and Marcion's

What's your take on Origen?

>>16709818
Don't know that much about him BUT the idea him and the Valentinians have of the cosmos/the body as a "net" or field where the soul can be saved by the Good God, and not where it is imprisoned, is extremely interesting to think about

>>16709520
Gospel of Thomas has been dated to be contemporary to the Synoptics. Apocryphon of John is at least <180AD.

https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=rs_hontheses

>>16709518
>cosmic non-dualism is corporatized mindfulness therapy tripe

>I listened to 5 minutes of Alan Watts and didn't like it

Imagine getting filter by Watts lmao

>>16709749
In Advaita there is no dissolution of consciousness or the soul, only the removal of the false things superimposed upon it.

>>16709815
certain evil things are selected to be good
good is more like a special code that is associated with a thing, it's proof
everyone wants to know what gets the code

>>16708937
Are you one of those pagan European larpers?

>>16709802
For who? A gods needs are not mine, it's needs are no more legitimate than pineapple as a pizza toping.

>>16709815
>The only airtight theodicies are Mani's and Marcion's

No it isn't, why does the evil god exist?
The simple necessity of evil discredits the idea of an omni-good-god.

>>16709858
You make no sense at all.

>>16709883
Neither Mani nor Marcion are committed an omnipotent good God. They're willing to sacrifice omnipotence for goodness.

>>16709894
Ok, seems unexpected, i never believed a religious person would be willing to pick good over power.

>>16709883
think of it this way: there is a two stage process by which evil becomes good: certain evil things are selected to become good, and then they are marked / imprinted good
you wouldn't get anywhere if you didn't have a way of recording the choice
there has to be some way to retain the effort that went into awareness of goodness

>>16709915
You've been raised in a Christian milieu that associates power with the good, or at least value. The light-spirits that congregate around Mani's God aren't even built for war, for example.

>>16709478
>>>16709434
>Yes, actual demons, entities that thrive on pain, suffering, and the objectification/destruction of bodies.

gee, that sounds like a group of people I know...

>>16709947
anti-semites are disgusting

>>16709926
Odd usage of words...
>>16709926
>there is a two stage process by which evil becomes good
evil cannot become good, action can be assigned goodness.
>>16709926
>certain evil things are selected to become good
By whomst?
>>16709926
>you wouldn't get anywhere if you didn't have a way of recording the choice
Choice is an intensly absurd belief that is at immediate glance unverifiable.
>>16709926
>there has to be some way to retain the effort that went into awareness of goodness
What?

>>16709998
client side networking for the supernatural
my awareness of what is good is good
that is to say, I'm good at being aware of what is good

>>16708290
what is your thoughts on the jewish Kaballah?

>>16710029
>client side networking for the supernatural
???
>>16710029
>my awareness of what is good is good
>that is to say, I'm good at being aware of what is good
None of this makes sense, are you basically saying our judgement of things being good makes things things intrinsically good?

>>16710066
Not particularly gnostic, but I can't say I've studied it in a gnostic capacity. Kether is the Demiurge on some readings, for example. Haven't read Scholem.

>>16709998
>Odd usage of words...
I can't even
>evil cannot become good, action can be assigned goodness.
I disagree with "evil cannot become good". There is a process by which what was evil becomes good. This is axiomatic.
>action can be assigned goodness
I agree with this. You learn how to chop wood. Independent of everything else, we can chop wood. It doesn't matter who the president is, we can still chop wood.
>By whomst?
God
>Choice is an intensly absurd belief that is at
no, we need that
you can't get rid of choice
we need it for later... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAwR6w2TgxY
>immediate glance unverifiable
you can't attack choice
it isn't allowed
you could even say...you don't have a choice
I could go on
I've got more
>What?
How is the effort that went into awareness of goodness retained?

>>16710077
I see. I've been studying it recently and I've gotten a lot out of it. Do you think I could get something out of studying Gnosticism?

>>16710093
It depends on your temperament. I think it's the time for people to be realistic about evil in this world, not the time to publish yet more books critiquing capitalism. Gnosticism is apolitical without feeling uninvolved, just as I like it.

>>16709956
that's a weird way of spelling based

>>16710075
>our judgement of things being good makes things things intrinsically good?
Nope.
God's judgement of things being good makes things good.

>>16710075
>???
There is a process by which what you have done to profane God is wiped clean. In a sense God changes your diaper. So God is mother and father and diaper.

>>16710097
>Gnosticism is apolitical without feeling uninvolved
I really like this. what would you recommend for someone to start reading into Gnosticism?

>>16708290
Instead of committing fully to Gnostic beliefs, should an individual formulate their own conception of reality? Gnosticism teaches that an evil being can deceive you, and present it's self as a benevolent being. So who's to say the monad described in Gnosticism isn't just another archon/demon deceiving you? You cant trust anything in the material world, so wouldn't the safe choice be to trust the divine spark within yourself? Similar to Blake adapting Gnosticism in to an individual conceptualization through The Book Of Urizen. Or many Buddhist, who do not believe in divinity, but ascension through meditation.

>>16709855
So you retain your individuality after union? Is this there same for Plotinus?

>>16710156
*is the same

>>16710080
If evil becomes good then good and evil both cease to exist.
Thing can be assign the quality of good or bad and depending on the values of a person evil thing become good if and ONLY if that persons values change.
>certain things are selected to become good by god
Unverifiable.
>you can't get rid of choice we need it for later
I can but i can't prove it since it's not even proven to exist in the first place.
>you can't attack choice
>it isn't allowed
>you could even say...you don't have a choice
Proof that it is absurd.
>How is the effort that went into awareness of goodness retained?
Wtf are you going on about?

>>16710117
Prove it.
>>16710139
This still makes no sense.

>>16710145
Hans Jonas' The Gnostic Religion. He saw a lot of resonances between the gnostic world-feeling and existential thought.

If you want the pure feeling itself, no scholarly frills, Jacques Lacarriere's The Gnostics will do ya. He's like a gnostic drill sergeant. If you can sort of forget about his characteristically French sympathies for the libertines, his is one of the most electrifying works I've ever read on the subject. Dude does NOT play.

>>16710149
You are correct, people who identify as straight up Sethians, Valentinians, etc. these days miss the point. Gnosticism is eternally relevant, because it will always be born in times where evil is dominant and good waning. There is nothing I enjoy more than individuated, mature expositions of gnostic thought, because no matter how idiosyncratic the content, you can always rely on it to be motivated by a genuine love for life and a willingness to just call a spade and spade and stop making excuses for the masters of the world, whether those masters are the elites sitting on top of the power pyramid or a tyrannical god.

>>16710149
>ascension through meditation
A divinely important goal.
It's just the christian god atomized and stripped of it's humanity.

>>16708290
What's it like to put that much effort into completely wasting your time?

>>16710233
It has been one of the most clarifying and fulfilling years of my entire life.

>>16710233
/thread

>>16710145
https://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/herm/
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1998/1998-h/1998-h.htm
Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
Kybalion - Three Initiates
https://archive.org/details/dli.granth.94129

>>16710310
Whitman isn't a gnostic, his pantheist love of multiplicity is anti-gnostic. Gnostics don't write poems about blades of grass.

The Kybalion, oh lord. Only Poimandres has gnostic themes.

>>16708385
>bad tree cannot produce good fruit, a good tree cannot produce bad fruit
wouldn't an implication of this be that mankind is devided into those who only do good and those who only do evil?

>>16710349
Yes, if we go with a hylics/psychic/pneumatic split, however humanity is a part of the Mixture so you can have pneumatics who fall short occasionally and hylics who are decent, just ignorant. Gods, especially self-proclaimed supreme Gods, should be exempt from this rule.

>>16710179
>If evil becomes good then good and evil both cease to exist.
No. Everything starts out evil, then the Great Flood happens and then there is good everywhere.
>Unverifiable
Axiomatic. You must assume this. It is an assumption that is unquestioned.
>Proof that it is absurd.
Your wastebasket is not absurd.
Your use of the word absurd is not absurd.
If you get rid of "choice" then "absurd" goes with it.
>Wtf
language
>Prove it
It is axiomatic.
>This still makes no sense.
You run out of energy to profane God. You just can't bear to utter another heresy, so you go forward with what you have. God recognizes this.

>>16708290
Why are you still interested in gnosticism and not jumped into the next best thing like stoicism, christianity or islamism?

>>16710385
None of those things interest me. I've already studied them. Only gnostics feel like they are speaking to me across time.

>>16709708
I read a lot of statements, I don't see any refutation though. This is just a list of things Christians claim that Gnostics don't or deny.

>>16709058
I'm skepitcal towards morality and I'm unsure that there are such Gods. How do Gnostics think about either? What is evil or goodness "transcendantally" with regards to all worldliness, how would a modern man have some credible knowledge of the existence of the archons?

>>16710447
We don't have any footage of child sex trafficking, so watch vegan documentaries. See what the masters of this world think about life. That is evil.

>>16708290
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chVjywxBnpo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP42C-4zL3w

>>16709783
You probably cry every day thinking about Vatican II's doctrinal innovations and the state of your church hierarchy, but you put out this front in public. It's hypocritical. Of course you'll deny it but w/e, it's the statistical truth with internet tradcaths. Familiarity breeds contempt, I used to like your type ten years ago.

>>16709894
Do you then agree that this True God that's not omnipotent is not either, say, absolutely perfect, or actus purus, or has any of those properties that make it first cause of everything that is? What is this first cause then? If there's none, isn't that a deficit of Gnosticism compared to, say, most abrahamisms and hinduism, since they can identify the God-as-first-principle of natural theology with theirs while you have no equivalent?

>>16710518
Evil has cosmogonic power in dualist systems, in order for them to qualify as dualist. No, I would not associate the True God with the prime mover because the prime mover is the condition of possibility for evil, etc.

No, True God is not omnipotent, and I don't need him to be, I just need him to be Good through and through.

>>16710455
I feel that way if I watch a movie like that ; but I don't know if that feeling is grounded in any truth. There are many feelings I have that I repress because I think they're caused by wrong desires or beliefs. I'm not asking you to demonstrate moral realism, I get this isn't a philsophical debate, but could you just explain what *is* morality from your Gnostic standpoint? Like, is it a property of objects, why do they have it, does it have a definition (the Good), is it a set of laws, etc.?

>>16710533
I didn't say prime mover because I think that implies that God is only the cause of change (as a final cause, in aristotelianism), and thus doesn't explain a lot. But the God of latter natural theologians is a necessary being that basically causes everything, every determination into existence. You either posit such a thing of you have "bruteness" (brute necessity, brute contingency, whatever). Does Gnosticism just posits brute existence of the True God and the evil god, and then the evil god creates the world? If that's how it is, although I'm actually quite sympathetic to it, I feel like that's a real point against it compared to traditional theology, that has a much better explanatory power.
Btw I'm also >>16710542

>>16710542
The principle of Evil in gnosticism is, formally, the world, the space of possibility where evil is actualized (and love becomes palliative). The Good is what transcends the world, or Being, by definition.

>>16710572
In what sense does it transcend being? If you say the *space of possibility* is the principle of Evil, I guess you don't mean by Being "the collection of all instantiated things" but literally all suchness, possible or actual. Are you not committed then to the idea that the Good is nothing, or at least that it's no thing in particular one can say anything about?
If this is where this is going, I'm sorry but I can't follow. This is asking a lot of irrational commitments to just explain evil in the world. Your theodicy becomes very costly.

>>16710559
Manichaeism, yes, posits the brute existence of Good and Evil (out of duality, comes the unity of mixture, not out of unity a One fissions into duality). Intuitively, it's a lot cleaner. Technically, it is the Good God that retains full cosmogonic power in Manichaeism, but in the Sethian texts for example it is the Demiurge and his archons who are solely responsible for that tradition's anthropogeny.

>>16710584
Yes, the Good is apophatic, but that's because the apophatic is the Good (as the negation of worldly parameters).

Don't think the Pleroma is a void, it is not, it is we who are in the void. Think of it this way: not non-Being as a negation of Being, but non-Being as simply that which is OTHER than being (in the same way Zizek explains the "undead": not the negation of life, but not quite the negation of death either).

You have to think a mode of individuality in which all "instantiated things" are not determined by a Monad which grounds their activity in a public field and therefore possesses all priority in that field (like how beings die because we are not THE Being), but a total inversion. I would clarify and say: not Being that is perverse, but a kind of Being.

>>16710588
Ok, so if I understand this well, some traditions say that the omnipotent God within the world is the Good God and some say it's the Bad One, but all posit the existence of both as brute facts?
I agree that it's already quite efficient metaphysically, much better than the type of metaphysics where the brute fact is the fucking mess of the laws of physics and a given state of matter or stuff like that. But I still think it's qualitatively different from an explanation from an absolutely simple fully necessary being (if such an explanation is possible). I don't think it's cleaner intuitively. Posing any bruteness, to me, at all, is a defeat of reason. Logically, any explanation is preferable to bruteness ; if not, you can just explain anything by saying it's a brute fact it exists. I get that not every philosopher agrees with me there, but do you think there is any type of Gnosticism that *could* formulate ultimate explanations, or does it have to posit these brute first principles? I get that Doubt-dispelling Exposition defends that type of dualism of the first principles so maybe I should read that passage again.

>>16710605
Maybe I'm too autistic, but following what you said earlier, I can't think of it as anything but the contradictory of the set of all possible things. I have a hard time teasing out what that'd be or the implications, but I think it'd be the positing of an infinite series of contradictory properties, something like that? Anyway I don't think that's what you mean.
Is the Monad that regulates instantiation of properties the source of logical norms themselves, in your view? So that the Good is beyond logic?

>>16710629
I believe only the Marcionite God is the only halfway-omnipotent God, but that's a whole other kettle of fish.

The Manichaean cosmos is a bubble of light lodged in the "kingdom of darkness", allegorically I'll take it as this universe lodged in the metastable vacuum we all occupy, but you don't have to take it there and I'm honestly wary of these traditions walking hat in hand into the scientific establishment and asking for a bite of gruel.

I interpret the Manichaean meta-cosmos as something like a mobius strip with light and dark halves, there is no "space" in which light and darkness meet, they are respectively infinite and border each other. It is simple because there's no need to derive evil, deficiency, even an incontinence in the Absolute from the failure of that Absolute, it's rather that darkness invades instead of light falling. To my mind which can't reconcile the quality of evil with goodness, so it is clean as a whistle. Where did they come from, what caused them? They caused themselves, in themselves, light is its own definition, it doesn't "wait on" darkness for an identity-in-contrast. We're not talking here two opposite sides of the same spectrum (that's only relevant INSIDE the cosmos), but rather the difference between two colors. Do you need red to know blue, and vice versa? They are diverse principles, NOT different (because difference implies some kind of criterion between them by which they're distinguished).

As for your second point, I simply imagine it as a mode of individuality that is not determined, answerable to, dependent on, etc. a public field. No longer ontic individuals hanging off of ontic structures, like just the fact we need to eat food, but ontological, autarchic subjects that might as well be gods. A popular image, of course, being a star.

I don't like syncretic gnosticism, I try to respect the individuality of each school, but I've had to sorta mix and match a bit to answer your questions since they transcend the purview of what Mani taught. In a pro-cosmic view, yes, the Good instantiated those logical norms that make possible its self-recognition: concretely, the Good "engineers" from the inside out the capacity for a human mind to see this world for what it is, ie the knowledge of good and evil.

>>16710658
That's interesting. I don't intuitively grasp your explanation but I'd like to think more about it. I don't feel rationally contrained by what I understand here to accept it, but I don't think you expect that to be the case. So maybe I'd like to discuss it further in the future. Do you have an email you could throw here, in case I have further questions later? Here's one of my email adresses :
kvntvoivod1389 [at] outlook.fr

>>16710681
I don't give out my email, but yeah I wasn't expecting an indoctrination. At the end of the day even if there's just a Monad, I can't love it and never will. If there is a plan to all this I think it'll understand why I didn't sit with my thumb up my ass crowing about how God works in mysterious ways.

>>16710156
> So you retain your individuality after union?
Individuality is something different from consciousness and is hence another thing falsely superimposed upon it. When the individuality that was superimposed upon consciousness is removed, the same consciousness continues and does not dissolve, sentience continues without interruption. Union in Advaita is not a literal union, there is no achievement of a result or fact which did not already exist. Shankara, commenting on some of the Bhedabheda Vedantins who existed around his time makes the point in his Brihadaranyaka Upanishad commentary that things which are truly eternal have no beginning, and so any doctrine which makes liberation the attainment of a newly-existing effect produced through any action, meditation or ritual makes their liberation a non-eternal liberation, which one would eventually fall out of back into the bondage of ignorance. In order for liberation to be eternal it has to be an already existing beginningless reality, realizable through knowledge.

Removing the false notions allows the already-present reality to shine forth, like the sun after the clouds in front of it dissipate; this doesn’t make that pre-existing reality become non-eternal. Underneath all the superimpositions the Supreme Self is already all-pervasive, sorrowless, omniscient and eternally liberated, so it has no need to attain union with these things as though they were something different from the Supreme Self’s intrinsic nature.

>Is this there same for Plotinus?
I don’t know his writings well enough to say

>>16710695
I just have many email addresses, precisely to be able to give them out in situations like this. But if you don't want to that's fine.
I agree with the way you present the alternative. I wouldn't say for myself that I could never love it, because maybe I'd access further information in some afterlife where it'd all make sense. But I'm pretty sure even if I did, it'd vindicate me right now not especially loving it, and certainly not committing to any of the particular doctrines that purport to speak its name.

>>16710705
Do you have discord? We can talk there. No I'm not a discord tranny

>>16710492
You're wrong. Perhaps you should have spent the past year feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, and praying rather than studying Gnosticism. The name of God is love.

>>16708290
What did you read? Can you make a list?

>>16710741
Lacarrier, Jonas, Rudolph, Couliano, Filoramo. If you Google them with "gnosis" the books will pop up. Besides that I'd been reading philosophy for years so I had the tools to put it into a context that wasn't just mythological.

Besides that, googling "gnostic [philosopher]" will almost always give you something dank.

>>16710707
Sure :
Mainmaligne022#5058

>>16710714
And you have done those things, spend a significant amount of energy on them? I doubt it, but as I said, it doesn't matter ; you'd be the exception then. In any case, I have no idea why you feel the need to remind me I'm not a moral exemplar, I know that very well.

>>16709883
>For who
Learn to read

bump

>>16709796
Gott is not Gottheit.

>>16710750
>Mainmaligne022#5058
Sadly I cant seem to find you.

>>16708424
So basically Schop

>>16708385
Please tell me you started with Plato and Plotinus before reading this shit

>>16708496
>my life sucks therefore the material world has an independently evil existence
Gnostic larpers are the most pathetic of the life deniers

>>16709340
So you dont then

>>16709547
>life is demonstrably a negative phenomenon
Prove this from the perspective of totality

>>16709879
Let's just say I'm not really fond of YHVH

What do you think of Jung?

>>16710701
>realizable through knowledge
Say there sir, would you be interested in some Zen Buddhism?

>>16708424
>Every day millions if not billions of beings are eaten by beings who will be eaten in turn, either by predators or the dust from whence they came.
Any text on this?

Want to make a flowchart/list of your recs?

>>16711845
>the totality

arguably the greatest cope ever concocted. if the place where you're standing is shit, why would the sum of all places to stand miraculously not be?

if, relative to the infinite, the finite is as nothing, then whence this discrepancy in the first place? completely useless proposition.

>>16711825
I read Plotinus years before I ever seriously looked at the gnostics.

>>16711832
>l-life denial

nietzschelets should be forbidden from putting their hands on a philosophy book until they're at least 35.

>>16712319
Lacarriere's The Gnostics. It's online.

>Thus, the simplest phenomenon, and the most elemental to boot - that of nutrition - would have been for the Gnostics a typical example of this maleficent interaction, for the very act of nourishing oneself, of sustaining life, specifically implies the death of other living species. Each birth, each perpetuation of life, increases the domain of death.

>In this unending circle, the simple fact of living, of breathing, feeding, sleeping and waking,
implies the existence and the growth of evil. What Darwinians were later to call natural
selection and the survival of the fittest had already been observed by Gnostics and was in their eyes a flagrant proof of the fundamental depravity of the universe.

if your grand, unified theory is utterly oblivious to the realities of food and drink, then you're another worthless urbanite whose confused recreational philosophy for Truth.

>>16712319
Lacarriere's The Gnostics. It's online.

>Thus, the simplest phenomenon, and the most elemental to boot - that of nutrition - would have been for the Gnostics a typical example of this maleficent interaction, for the very act of nourishing oneself, of sustaining life, specifically implies the death of other living species. Each birth, each perpetuation of life, increases the domain of death.

>In this unending circle, the simple fact of living, of breathing, feeding, sleeping and waking, implies the existence and the growth of evil. What Darwinians were later to call natural selection and the survival of the fittest had already been observed by Gnostics and was in their eyes a flagrant proof of the fundamental depravity of the universe.

if your grand, unified theory is utterly oblivious to the realities of food and drink, then you're another worthless urbanite whose confused recreational philosophy for Truth.

>>16712038
Good but I don't like "psychological" gnosticism. His 7 Sermons of the Dead qualifies as a genuinely modern gnostic text but I'm not crazy about the reduction of the Demiurge, Archons, Aeons, etc. to psychological realities.

>>16710748
>Google
criminal swine

>>16712475
le epic opinionated internet man. Do any of you have anything to say or am I just talking to myself?

>>16712459
Jung doesn't reduce them to psychology either btw

>>16712433
>arguably the greatest cope ever concocted
Its the exact opposite, its truth, as opposed to your imagined escape. The totality will spread wherever you go. You are one of us forever and no amount of autistic fun time you have with your Gnostic and other dualist friends will ever change that.

>>16712499
>>16712433
also a side note did you ever get into Rune Soup and his archonology? (https://runesoup.com/2013/03/archonology-things-that-persist-part-1/))

>>16712499
>dude the Whole, the One, the All, aahhhhh

Not interested, take it somewhere else.

>>16712532
good argument.

>>16712537
You first. I don't care for a pantheistic dissolution into the One. I reject the benevolence of the Whole. You want to melt back into chaos and call it coming home, knock yourself out.

>>16712571
>You first
Ok, here we go. The hell realm of the future; (desire, anxiety, delusion) The hell realm of the past (shame, guilt, confusion) These two hell realms are not past and future itself but (your idea of) them.

As any lawyer will tell you, the past is a lie. And we all know Nostradamus was not really a time traveller, and neither are we.

So where does that leave us? It appears the future and the past are both ideas rather than realities. This is not to say there is not cause and effect and time, just that the (idea of) time is eternally wrong.

Where does this place us? In a web of lies and falsehoods we can never escape? Almost. These ideas are but a manifestation of reality, thus they are real, the question is; are they aligned with the external world? The answer is No, never can be.

So is there a truth? Yes. There is the truth beyond ideas, the truth is being itself, the only truth.

Now here comes my issue with you; Where can these ideas take you but madness? How can these ideas ever transcend the plane which produced them? For every idea you have is reliant on evolution, history, and memory. There is nothing beyond these.

>>16708290
redpill me on hylics. did the gnostics discover npc's or is it incorrect to equate the two?

>>16708303
to suffer

>>16712633
Yup, there it is, the degenerate spinozist's... Uhh, sorry, the non-dualist's univocity: everything is reducible to the flat plane of "evolution, history, memory". You're taking me to task for not subscribing to your presuppositions.

I see evolution, history, etc. as a flat plane only formally, the content itself is not flat. For example, in the Sethian texts, evolution is the plane where a war of determinations is waged by light and dark forces. Poetically, the Archons give us mouths to feed, the Aeons lips to kiss. Technically, everything proceeds by a form of causal mimicry: just because this plane is where these things happen doesn't mean that everything originates in this plane.

This isn't fanciful. It's the only satisfactory explanation for an internalist view of love. The mind isn't commensurate with the universe. Evo psych will never explain love and morality. Better to see reality as the intersection of many principles mimicking the causal machinery which allows their mediation than simply just being that causal machinery.

I told you I've thought about this from every possible angle. There are far more sophisticated, exotic ways to understand Being than a flat plane.

>>16712692
Every great tradition has had these sorts of typologies. Yes, hylics are NPCs, they die with the world because they exist in coalescence with it.

>>16712483
Everything starts out evil, then the Great Flood happens and then there is good everywhere.
The End.

>>16712499
The totality is a nonsensical abstraction so is all deductions from it, you fucking retard.

>>16712804
listen while writing this post, a gust of wind rustled the leaves of your window board.

>>16712702
interesting posts anon, what would you recommend reading? don't go easy on me, i want to understand your perspective more please

>What is to be said of someone who flings himself into the Ocean and has no aspiration but to drown himself in it? This is precisely the significance of the so-called "fusion" with a "cosmic consciousness" which is really nothing but the confused and indistinct assemblage of all the psychic influences.

>>16712818
Get a life, tripfag.

>>16712830
Most of it I pieced myself. Read PKD if you want the causal mimicry stuff (he calls the principle Zebra), Edward Butler for his henadology (the intersection of many principles/"universes" stuff), and the Apocryphon of John (iirc) for the move and counter-move stuff.

Read Nimrod's Gnostic Fragments if you want anti-evolutonist, anti-pantheist gnosticism. The link isn't working for me right now but it's on Forbidden Religion. Google.

test?

>>16708446

The abolish-abide dichotomy of "fulfill" is silly and both ideas are, moreover, anti-Christian in the sense of (re)absorbing Jesus in the very thing he is supposed to change, so is a third position of coinciding them. Rather, consider "fulfillment" as not so much 1, or 2, or a converging 3, but the fundamental 0 whence they all diverge: the Law neither resolving by Jesus maximizing abolishment at the expense of abiding or vice-versa, nor by finding a perfect balance between them, but by destroying the seesaw itself. It is "fulfilled" by having the FORM of Law exposed, which transforms, and I maintain destroys, its CONTENT in ways otherwise impossible. "Atheists" are incidentally right, and very Christian, in finding Atonement absurd. It is the "Christians", or Catholics, who are anti-Christian when attempting to reconcile it with Jesus Christ as if trying to put two halves of a broken object together. That they can no longer constitute a whole is precisely the point. The clothes have no emperor.

>>16712862
Nice, this guy gets it.

>>16712855
thank you. would you say any modern thinkers come close to your perspective on the level of system or method? is there anyone you think gets the gnostics right for example, or puts you on the right footing for understanding them?

What do you think of pic

>>16712921
The idea is to break out of this univocal prison where everything said of what's beyond it becomes instantly inscribed back into the parameters of the system. You don't want to feed the Archon's living maze with blueprints for an escape hatch, you need to find a way to articulate that escape hatch as something that exists both because of the maze and in spite of it.

Butler's Henadology is useful because it gets you thinking of modes of individuality that aren't answerable to univocal planes of immanence. You just have to really think at a more exotic level. Not a One that refracts into plurality, but a One that is the overlapping, the superposition or mediation of a pre-ontological plurality. It's my own idiosyncratic reading that needs some hashing out, but it's there.

Laruelle is explicitly in conversation with the Gnostics. Without getting into how he affirms a new idea of Sameness over and above Delueze (without "regressing" into Platonism), I'll just post his formula for Evil: Evil isn't mixed with the Good, Evil is Mixture as such. Henadology is NOT gnostic, but it's not hard to see how it could be.

>>16712971
Masterpiece. I love it. An initiation in book form. We don't need more non-dual mystics, we need Krag.

>>16712709
>Every great tradition has had these sorts of typologies.

i suppose the 3 fold division of society into a higher and lower type of human being is a mainstay of IE culture. but the hylic description seems so similar to the npc meme, its uncanny. any readings about this subject in particular?

>>16711756
jung and schop intuitively figure out loads of gnostic teachings on their own,scary folks

>>16713214
the npc meme is hardly original

>>16713248
this. people have always intuited hylics exist, npc meme is a modern derivative

I'm not a gnostic but I have a question.Can hylics be saved?can they grow a soul?can they touch divinity eventually?sometimes I look at my parents and I think they fit the bill for hylics,but I've seen them do things that to me feel pure and sincere,that i want to treasure in my memories and sho on and sho on *sniff*
I don't want them do dissappear,no matter how braindead they are,I wish they are saved too.Sometimes I pray for them,I dont know what god or devil or spirit is hearing me,but I do.

>>16713267
oh yea? sauce?

>>16708290
Explain to em Geradamas and Armozels motives.
There is a theory that Sabaoth gained light and became stronger than Samael, and is actually Michael.

>>16713288
The jury's out on what the texts say but a big motif is the savior is the one who saves himself, you're saved by what in you wants to be saved. I wouldn't worry about your parents. Hylics is an extreme designation, total bottom feeders of matter

>>16713290
zoomers simply re-label anything and declare it a new thing

>>16713290
Doesn't exist, there's a logical continuity between the ideas not a historical one.

>>16713288

CAN they? Yes.

>>16713288
Do you understand why a being like Christ even came to this world?

>>16708290
Is it true that many famous 20th century thinkers were crypto-gnostics?

>>16713617
Bataille was infatuated with archontic evil. Baudrillard likes Manichaeism and says so himself. Heidegger was gnosticism without the pleroma, or: Heidegger was gnosticism with a demiurge that is the nothingness that nothings. Lacan describes the ontological control system from the perspective of language and desire. Deleuzian positivity decoded and molecularized by all these systems is a very handy-dandy way of understanding gnostic creation as synonymous with negation (of a virtual fullness).

>>16712526
This looks pretty good. I like this kind of gnostic metapolitics but I'm skeptical it'll go anywhere.

The point of gnosis is the idea that an immanent critique of the totality (the Joban lament) is just as valid, if not more so, than the totality itself. Valid meaning, it has just as much as a right to Being as Being itself. I hope this clarifies things. The only way you can argue against this stuff is to completely invert all your premises and then go from there, not take them as agreed upon for both parties

>>16713855
Fair points and all that.

I always was more of an Ecclesiastes guy than a Job Guy,

The book of Job has underlying it the godly promise of meaning and direction, which i think is a big mistake...

>>16714063
Yeah, Ecclesiastes and Job do a pretty good job of articulating that fault line in the OT between a Hellenic tragic sense and an incipient gnosticism.

How do you reconcile wanting to live with your newfound gnosticism?

>>16708290
Was it worth it?
Can you make out some parallels with Kabbalah?

>>16714268
Also what is the gnostic way to achieve god's knowledge?

>>16711561
In case you're not OP, try again, because OP had no problem adding me.

>>16714479
No I am not OP, I am a great scholar of many philosophical schools and i cant seem to find him with just copy/paste his name into the search function.

I am just not used to my own discord. Please tell me step by step what I have to do.

>>16712499
Does the whole contain everything? In which case, it contains experiences of suffering, since we have them. So it contains imperfection, suffering. If not, it's not the whole.
You have to defend imperfections, from your standpoint of 'advocacy of the whole', not say that you stop percieving them from this total standpoint. To be really total, that standpoint has to include all, including the experience of suffering in the world (which, btw, isn't the type of experience 'enlightened' people describe ; they don't start feeling and knowing and being everything).
You can just redefine the whole or totality to be something else, but that's a shit move.

>>16714498
On the homepage, there should be a green button where you can just copy and paste. Copy and paste the whole thing, with the # and the number, as it is.
Let's now stop talking about discord.

>>16714510
>Does the whole contain everything? In which case, it contains experiences of suffering
Yes.
>which, btw, isn't the type of experience 'enlightened' people describe
We must know different enlightenments.
>they don't start feeling and knowing and being everything
Correct

The point isnt that life isnt suffering or "bad" thats what buddhists think, its completely fine.

The problem is thinking you are in any position whatsoever to judge it. It is like being 3rd grader critiquing common core for teaching you badly.

You are permanently shrouded in the totality, and all that is good and all that is evil and all your ideas about them are part of this totality.

>>16714812
You sound like one of Job's friends.

>>16714835
Im more akin to Ecclesiastes. Life is hevel my friend.

This is a good summary (although i encourage you too read the actual book, its not long and its a real rollercoaster)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeUiuSK81-0

>>16714847
I don't make excuses for the totality. I don't care how beautiful the painting is if it's painted with death. If your God thinks that's just cheeky he is a demon.

>>16714812
You are in a position to think you are in pain. In fact, you're by definition in the best position to have intuitive grasp of your own position.
The whole may recontextualize that position, but if it's really the whole, it still includes it as it is. So an experience of the whole would be an experience of all those personal situations of pain, misery (and pleasure, etc.). It may narratively explain them, but it doesn't negate them.
As I said, your stances hinges on the quality of that explanation ; does it make this suffering necessary, good, does it reconcile the formerly lonely sufferer with it? If you can't at least hint as to how it does, or prove that it has to do so somehow, you're only expressing a possibility. Sure, maybe it's possible from that standpoint of the whole I come to the conclusion that my suffering was justified. Maybe not.

(cont.)
>>16714812
But, btw, I'll add again that this standpoint doesn't seem to be the experience of enlightenment you read about. Sure, some enlightened people will say they "feel" that somehow all evil is justified, now that they've reached "enlightenment". But they never seem to gain a capacity to explain it to anyone in a way that's convicing. If anything, professional philosophers are better at that. So it doesn't seem that their experience really gives them an intuitive grasp of everything. Personally, I think it just fries their brain so much they're stuck in happy mode.

>>16714853
I dont believe in God friend.
>>16714864
>>16714870
>You are in a position to think you are in pain. In fact, you're by definition in the best position to have intuitive grasp of your own position.

It is your own perogative
>>16714870
>Sure, some enlightened people will say they "feel" that somehow all evil is justified
I dont think the Dao feels any need to justify itself.

You see you are still in meta thinking mode, which permanently is an illusion. There is no meta. Even if God came down with a chariot and brought you to heaven, it would still only be an extension of the totality. Even God cant escape it.

>>16708424
>a tradition that takes the suffering of the finite subject/animal/even plant (if you're a Manichaean) as the only valid condition of truth. from there, an inner knowledge of what must be true for finite beings to protest against the conditions of their cosmic enslavement follows into an inner knowledge of the True God.
seems pretty buddhist to me (dukkha, etc.)

>>16708311
literally proverbs especially proverbs 8 make sure you're reading the lxx since that's the version the apostles used.

>>16714883
>I dont think the Dao feels any need to justify itself.
That's a cop-out. Sure, no need, but why not, even as a play, ever let out a glimpse of this superior knowledge? Why not out of empathy and love for others, explain the whole thing in such a way as to allow them to feel that this suffering is justified faster?
>Even if God came down with a chariot and brought you to heaven, it would still only be an extension of the totality. Even God cant escape it.
That depends on what you think God is, but no, I'm accepting your premisse here. I'm only talking about the whole, understood as "all that is". You say we can't judge whether life is good or bad. I say we can judge whether or not we suffer, and that suffering or lack thereof exists as a particular experience, and it's part of the whole, so the whole can't be the negation of it, so if the standpoint of the whole makes us judge life is good, it must be by retroactively making this suffering appear justified. It's not a theodicy if there's no God, but that's still the deal you're committing yourself to. Strangely yet, no one who's had this experience of "the whole" seems to be able to show how suffering is justified in a compelling way better than any committed philosopher can, they just feel like it is. I think it speaks against your conception.

>>16714936
I wouldnt necessarily say life is good or bad, life is simply suchness. It just is, bro.

Also i wouldnt say enlightened people say it is justified, Siddharta was practically an anti-natalist and of course the first noble truth of buddhism is that life is suffering or "There is suffering"

Heres a koan for you;
世尊、因外道問、不問有言、不問無言。

A non-Buddhist philosopher said to the Buddha, "I do not ask for words; I don not ask for non-words."

世尊據座。

The Buddha just sat there.

外道贊歎云、世尊大慈大悲、開我迷雲令我得入。

The philosopher said admiringly, "The World-honored One, with his great mercy, has blown away the clouds of my illusion and enabled me to enter the Way."

乃具禮而去。

And after making bows, he took his leave.

阿難尋問佛、外道有何所證贊歎而去。

Then Ananda asked the Buddha, "What did he realize, to admire you so much?"

世尊云、如世良馬見鞭影而行。

The World-honored One replied, "A fine horse runs even at the shadow of the whip."

>>16714977
Well if you're skeptical towards morality I guess it indeed makes no sense to discuss if particular things can be morally justified.
But one more point if you'll allow it ; realizing there is no good or evil (say, once you get to the standpoint of the whole, but maybe in some other way), I don't think that would make one accept suffering as much as conclude there is no other way than to do what's most pleasant for oneself. I can't really see how one is then led to any more altruism than is strictly the most pleasant, once one's skeptic towards good or bad. Does taoism do away with altruism?
I agree about Buddhism, but I don't think Buddhism asks one to become one with the whole, rather to negate it and go in some state beyond being. So I don't see it as as problematic with buddhism than with philosophies of unity with nature. But I suppose you'd rather say buddhism says the same thing as taoism?
Thanks for the Koan, it's nice. Do you take it as saying that the mere anticipation of an answer can be enough to get it?

>>16715050
>Well if you're skeptical towards morality I guess it indeed makes no sense to discuss if particular things can be morally justified

I might personally be moral, but i recognize that it is impermanent as all things are. In constant flux.
In the Dao De Jing at one point Lao Tzu dissuades any becoming emperor from delighting in violence because "someone who delights in violence cannot have his way in the kingdom" Although Lao Tzu is often read as a very kind humble and compassionate man, he is certainly not a moralist.

>I don't think that would make one accept suffering as much as conclude there is no other way than to do what's most pleasant for oneself.

I agree with you here, although being a hedonist might not be as easy as you may think, although god bless you if you choose that route. Living for desire is often considered to take you into the hell realms in eastern mysticism. (darkness, pain, confusion)

If by living in a way that is the most pleasant means enjoying the small things in life, staying out of trouble and following moral law (do unto others as you would have done unto you) then yes. Also dont worry too much about death and suffering, what use is that worry? People fret so much over their survival, as far as i know no one has succeeded.

>but I don't think Buddhism asks one to become one with the whole, rather to negate it and go in some state beyond being.

Then your reading of buddhism is different from mine. I am not a buddhist though, i am a Daoist.

>Do you take it as saying that the mere anticipation of an answer can be enough to get it?
Not quite, if you were to present the "total function" the full process which is all encompassing to someone. How would you best do it? Would you try to catalogue the whole thing? Of course it is eternally impermanent, when youve painted a river it is a different river.

The buddha showed the man the total function with perfect subtlety.

>>16715050
>Does taoism do away with altruism?
also a personal tip on this note; devotion is a very useful tool of inner balance.

There is a reason AA considers surrendering to a higher power the second of the 12 steps

What you worship could be anything, but it has to be worthy. It could be the noble eightfold path or the four stoic virtues or maybe something you yourself cooks up.

>>16708862
sounds like gobbledygook

>>16709206
Amen brother.

>>16715106
Ok so morality makes sense at the level of the components of the whole, but not at its total level.
I take what you say on the possibility of only striving for happiness as a legitimate way, and there still the necessity to still follow moral law, as asserting that this moral law is conductive to happiness. If that's what you're saying I do think it solves the problem of moral realism (how to assert morality says something about the world) by making it functionally equivalent with hedonism (though ofc. an informed hedonism, like the one of Epicure for exemple, that can end up being very moderate), so that most of the stakes of the debates aren't there anymore.
The way you interpret the koan makes sense, yes. I agree that indeed, to communicate this perception of the whole, you'd only pick up some features of the whole, because you can't communicate it all ; and if these features you want to communicate happen to be impossible to communicate verbally, you'd communicate them in stranger ways. Though personally that way of understanding things I find a bit problematic, because I try to get at truth through reasoning, which implies it can always be translated verbally. Denying that would be sufficient to reject my argument on enlightenment not providing people with apparently knowledge of the whole since they can't express it better than philosophers.

>>16715122
That makes sense. Following my second paragraph above, you could justify altruism as a necessity for the individual if he wants inner balance, as you phrase it. Do you assert it's true for all men, though? Intuitively I'd suppose some (even myself...) have some basic amoral such that suppressing them doesn't make them more happy, and can only be justified by moral realism (there are moral laws/moral properties so you must act according to those).

Would you list all the books you read?

>>16715198
The gnostic books written by Jacques Lacarriere, Hans Jonas, Kurt Rudolph, Couliano, and Giovanni Filoramo. I promise you you won't get a better grip on the topic reading anyone else.

The rest is just what I absorbed by osmosis.

David Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus, Le Guin's Those Who Walk Away From Omelas, Yourcenar's The Abyss, PKD's Valis, and A Little World Made Cunningly are all excellent works of gnostic fiction.

>>16715185
>Do you assert it's true for all men, though?
No, i would never do that. When out camping in the woods watch for wolves. Most campers are usually fine. Either way being too careful can be an impediment to your life, do not be too attached to life or you will miss it. in other words YOLO

>because I try to get at truth through reasoning
Long as youre having fun :3 Just do not mistake the map for the terrain.

Also here is a zen story for you, since i will go to bed now.

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away at the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

>>16715262
Thanks for the story, good night.

>>16708862
t. semen and menses eater
>>16708330
irenaeus the incelibate couldn't even read a map
>>16710310
lol the kybalion
>>16710145
kurt rudolph, eric voeglin, april de conick, elaine pagels
carl jung and PKD are the closest thing to modern-day gnostics
also www.gnosis.org

>>16715339
>Voegelin

You can't be serious.

>>16715367
i am
prolly should add ehrman, irenaeus the incel, and the other heresiarch or w/e they are called

>>16715373
Voegelin's a clown, he's not a good source on gnosticism

>>16715384
he is good for the same reason irenaeus is good in that they got a few droplets of wisdom and a bunch of bullshit, so you can see it from the mouth of the rubes and know-nothings

>>16715390
Certainly, but not as an introduction.

What books of the Bible/gospels are most imsportant to study for Gnosticism?

>>16715403
genesis, job, wisdom, proverbs, john, colossians, ephesians

>>16715403
Marcion's Bible :^)

>>16715408
Thanks!

>>16708290
>I spent a year doing nothing but studying gnosticism from every possible angle.

Karen detected.

>>16709947
Fascists?

>>16708290
Which meds are you on?

>>16709303
Four letter word that starts with “J” and ends with (You)s

If I find chaos, pain, eternal struggle and self-consumption to be beautiful, am I a hylic? I think Sisyphus should be happy.

>>16708428
>1599985198466.gif
Confusers (Zionist useful idiots) are quick to geomtrically associate the retroactive tranformation of the cross into the cube with bondage/imprisonment, not realizing that the conversive proactive transformation into the cross actually constitutes the sublimation of the cube.

why doesnt good god the ultimate just save us, is it because he is blind and infinite? how can His emanations be so mediocre, filled with pain and bad and dissapointment? how can things emerge from the pleroma its already full? is our reality just excessive? why is there space for an excessive reality when theres the pleroma?

>>16709206
Just look at who George Soros hangs out with and the the group that allowed him to scam the British Government he is a front man their names aren't hidden its fiance group, his kids have been caught at "protest". Bill Gates is a obvious one, Clintons and the Bushes. In the end its going to be a cringe blood dancing cult ruled by a matriarch.

South Korea equivalent is the Golden Goddesses. Its 8 mega rich Korean feminist Women with a cult who have been behind multiple Korean presidents, Koreans riot everytime then forget a year later. Unironically South Korea has been the main libtard bastion of East Asia that they are the main financiers of far left wing in Japan pushing for it to become like the US moral system based on capitalist corporations guidelines and complete open borders.

>>16717244
checked and this was directly related to Golden Goddesses cult as a sacrifice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_MV_Sewol

>>16708290
Who cares? There are people who spend their whole lives studying gnosticism and even out of those I only care about the opinions of a select few. A year is nothing.

>>16708290
What do you feel about picture related?

Interesting thread, how does Gnosticism compares to Buddhism?

>>16709518
Prove that evil exists independently from good

>>16710156
Individuality is more essential than anything else in Plotinus and Platonism.

>>16714510
>suffering
>bad
No.

>>16717033
You're a Platonist.
All evil we sin to do the gods and Providence through Ananke will weave into something even more beautiful and good—or justice will mend it.
An existence without suffering is death.

Debunked.

>>16717767
Says the degenerate

>>16709796
In a word we may say that evil is not to be found in the intellectual realm, for
all intellectual genera are free of evil. Nor is it to be found in universal souls
or in universal bodies, for all that is universal is free of evil, being eternal and
always in accordance with nature. It remains that it is to be located in partial
souls or partial bodies. But in this case it cannot lie in their essence, for all
essences come from the gods. Nor does it lie in their powers, for these are in
accordance with nature. It remains that it has to exist in their activities. But it cannot exist in rational activities, for these all strive for the good, nor in irra-
tional ones, for these too work in accordance with nature. Accordingly, it
needs to be found in their mutual asymmetry. And in bodies evil can exist
neither in form, for form wants to control matter, not in matter itself, for it
longs to be ordered. It follows then that it is to be found in the lack of sym-
metry between form and matter.

This arises from free-will, curiosity, ignorance, innocence... And is in the greatest scheme, not even the worst evil event you can think of, not absolutely evil, and the small light in it will in time outshine the evil. But this doesn't mean the perpetrators should go unpunished, in fact their punishment is justice and part of the rebalance towards Good of all things. For all divine punishment is for the benefit of the sinner's redemption, and for the worst acts it is the victim who will be the final judge of when their torment ends, they have to forgive them.

>>16717837
>wants an effortless existence without purpose constantly blasting heroin
>calls me degenerate

>>16717767
>suffering is only bad insofar as I am subject to it
Won't change my mind

>>16717881
>we need suffering to experience meaning bro

hallmark platitudes are not wisdom, they're hallmark platitudes

>>16717747
Could you elaborate more then as to how individuality works in Henosis for Plotinus?

>>16709421
Not that anon, but, in short;
Gnosticism = Demiurge is an evil, misbegotten bastard child who made the fallen physical world to ensnare human souls, and is either ignorant or actively spiteful to a higher entity, God/the Monah
Hermeticism = There is a descended chain of Monad/God=Demiurge=Logos, with the Demiurge acting as a kind've middleman in influencing the physical realm. The physical realm IS the work of God, even though it's lesser than the metaphysical, which is why suffering is a thing. It is not perfect, but material is not inherently evil.
They pull from a lot of the same wells, but are very, very different in execution and philosophy.

Thank you!

>>16710344
>a song of the Self
>no gnostic themes
>

Is gnosis a meme? Why do you believe in transcendence when you haven't achieved it yourself of known anyone that has (and could prove it to you?)