/lit/ - Literature

it's not

Because the world is shit and the churches are being revealed as pedophile cabals and new atheism has crashed and burned and left people craving a true orientation toward the light

>>16749002
Gnostics feel smarter than everyone because muh secret knowledge.

>>16749002
>concrete for president
I should read concrete again, thanks anon.

>>16749012
fpbp

Freemasons are gnostics and they have been around for 300 years at least. This is not new.

>>16749015
based

>>16749016
cringe

disillusionment with the world and it's never ending unexplainable cruelty.

>>16749089
based

>>16749039
>the guys who hate the princes of this world are actually the princes of this world
t. prince of this world

(cringe)

>>16749039
Yet Freemasonry venerates the Great Architect as demiurge while classical Gnosticism denigrates him--I would call them closer to Hermeticism and Kabbalism.

>>16749012
/thread

>>16749012
>>16749525
>denial
Isn't it amazing how after all these centuries of suppression the truth manages to resurface?

>>16749565
Do you have even a shred of evidence that the average normalfag is reading the Nag Hammadi?
Just because pop culture throws a reference or two doesn't mean Joe Sixpack knows what Gnosticism is in depth. It's like saying people know about Satanism because a pentagram appeared in a shitty horror film.

>>16749002
Because people constantly invent new ways to be insufferable faggots

>>16749002
Can someone please explain to me what gnosticism is? I only just learned about it, and thought it was like the Christian form of Buddhism or Islam's Sufiism. It's the idea that you can become enlightened or spiritually liberating by a realization, right?

>>16749016
If you only took the time to understand it, then these things may not seem so esoteric

>>16749583
But it was never meant for the average person, was it? In intellectual spheres I see an attraction resurfaced towards Gnosticism and its related philosophies, i.e, Plato, Schopenhauer, Jung, etc.

>>16749604
Can you specify about these intellectual spheres, where do they gather, are you a member? And if you say Twitter, then GTFO

>>16749610
I've never had a twitter account. My experience is limited to /lit/ and the university I go to.

>>16749012
/thread

>>16749595
Simon Magus came up with the revolutionary notion that there were two roots, a superior and inferior one, and that our world is a union of these two, i.e. light and darkness. He was later libeled in the Acts for an act of subversion of the unity of the godhead, but some (i.e., Robert M. Price) say his was the original Christianity of "Paul" and that our Christianity is a synthesis created in the 4th century by dimwitted papists.
This was followed by the brilliant work of Valentinus, who broke down the universe into a series of archetypes (Aeons) emanating from a primordial oneness, wherein our universe was the product not of a vengeful Father but the capricious Sophia who ventured to create something without the full assent of the Pleromatic fullness, a vacuity that could only be remedied by the mediation of the archetypal Christ.

>>16749618
>intellectual spheres
>/lit/

>>16749625
Thank you! I don't understand though why anyone would believe what Valentinus came up with though. Most mythologies evolved from generations of oral history but in this case, we know one dude invented it all. Did he give any kind of logic or reasoning? Or is it supposed to be an analogy for understanding abstract ideas?

Is the enlightenment talked about in gnosticism the same as that in Buddhism and Hinduism or is it simply the knowledge that the God of the Old Testament is a demiurge?

>>16749618
there is a university where Gnosticism is popular?

lol where do you go to? Yale Divinity School

>>16749643
He took an existing Gnostic cosmology that can be seen in the Nag Hammadi texts (Irenaeus attests these were quite early) that were certainly indebted to a pre-Christian Kabbalistic and/or Hermetic tradition and added a more Platonic spin. His contribution was mostly in branding the Demiurge as merely limited in his understanding instead of downright malevolent as in the Ophite/Sethian gnosis.
And yes, what Valentinus said is very much of a nondualistic nature akin to Advaita Vedanta (this is specifically what the Gnostic scholar Gilles Quispel called it). If you have studied Tantric Buddhism you will feel right at home, as he characterizes Christ and Sophia in the same way as Shiva and Shakti. When Arthur Avalon first translated the Tantric texts, he frequently referred to Gnostic analogues.

gnosis is litteraly a virus designed by those infected with the truth of light so that it spreads and burns down this hellhole of an existence. its the miracle cure supressed by big pharma black iron archonship

>>16749675
This is incredibly interesting to me, and you seem to know a lot about it- could you provide a brief intro reading list on this topic? Thanks for your great answers :]

>>16749002
The demiurge is slipping up and becoming too obvious

>>16749693
Try this book for a good overview of the Ophitic/Naassene Gnosis. For Valentinianism the collected works of Gilles Quispel in
Gnostica, Judaica, Catholica provide a good introduction, as well as Hans Jonas' The Gnostic Religion.

>>16749002
not /lit/
>>>/x/

>>16749625
Perhaps we should not have encouraged them to use cordless microphones
For they have walked too far from the source and are emitting a lesser frequency

>>16749124
I don't think they venerate it, they have him there so they can name it.

>>16749583
Is there some kind of Gnosticism bible? I've always been interested but have no idea where to start

>>16750028
start with the KJV, after you finish it, leave it in a little free library and make your way to the nearest orthodox church

Gnosticism is dumb
Platonism, Neoplatonism, hermeticism say the exact same things in essence except they don't have autistic meltdowns about the alleged evilness of the material world.
Gnosticism isn't an answer to the problem of evil and anyone who thinks it is is a complete midwit who has probably neither read the Bible nor any gnostic texts in the first place.

>>16750055
You're not even trying.
>>16750028
The Nag Hammadi are the oldest Gnostic texts, but you might want a modern commentary.
Gnosis.org is probably what you're looking for.

>>16749002
It's part of a memetic virus that was unleashed on the internet in the early 90's. Source: https://pastebin.com/4s91qRn6

>While too conceptual to be of any transformative value to the public at large, this idea goes to the heart of today’s viral efforts, and is certainly understood by those who consider themselves soldiers in the meme wars. Biological viruses are only successful when they are able to turn their host cells into manufacturing plants for more viruses. The virus interpolates its genetic material into the DNA code of the cell, so that the cell will begin reproducing the virus. Eventually the cell divides or explodes, releasing many copies of the infected code. This is how a whole organism can become infected with a single virus; the code has iterated millions of times. The strategy of these Internet viral manifestos is to use the iterative potential of the computer nets to spread memes about viruses housed within units that are themselves viruses. The virus 23 strain even makes reference to chaos math and the predictions of some fractal influenced observers that the world itself will reach a critical mathematical moment of “singularity” near the turn of the millennium. The virus writer exploits a chaotic device—the computer-generated media virus—to spread the conceptual and spiritual implications of chaos mathematics.

>>16750061
This is such a dumb reductionist view of gnosticism

>>16749002
>Why is gnosticism getting so popular?
this might just be me but cosmology diagrams and other schizoschematics made by people like Böhme are kino. gnosticism has a lot of kino artistry filed under its name, so ofc i'd enjoy it.

also this guys pic related got me interested a few years back lol
>>16749583

>>16750090

trying? 80 percent of people who continue their spiritual path after having taken interest in Gnosticism go down this road. The rest is divided up between advaita/Buddhism/Catholicism.

Don't believe me? Continue the journey you're on friend!

>>16750127
>schizoschematics
pic related
not *exactly* gnostic but close enough

Ontological dualism is a cope

>>16749012
A significant fraction of this board promotes gnostic interpretations of Christianity, and there are literally SIX THOUSAND posts per day here. So yeah, I'd say Gnosticism is becoming pretty big.

>>16749583
Never seen the follow up to this pic

>>16750149
pic related

the same reason german idealism became popular a few years ago

a bunch of slacker teenagers with mediocre grades in school thought it was some cheat code to genius, not realizing they just come across as schizo losers and that their weak intelligence is immediately apparent