Reforming Gnosticism

When people say, “My goodness, your Gnosticism is so different than what I have come to understand Gnosticism to be,” that’s because I didn’t take it from secondary sources. I took it from the original sources.  Then of course, Valentinian Gnosticism is an early form of what has come to be called Christianity. Christianity diverged immensely from the original message around the 300’s and on up, when the gnostic books were taken out of Orthodoxy. Those folks that are called heresiologists are the people that went around slapping heresy labels on the early Christianity—the early Valentinian Gnosticism. They weeded it out of the official sacred texts that made their way into the New Testament.

The main book of the Nag Hammadi that I relate to is called the Tripartite Tractate. I believe it to be the purest form of gnosis. It has very little in the way of mythologies, of extraneous characters, of the names of things and the numbers of things and the astrology of it all.

Valentinian Gnosticism from the Tripartite Tractate is unique in that the fallen Aeon is not called Sophia, a female character. The Aeon who fell is called Logos, not to be confused with the Son of God, Christ, or Jesus.

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Podcasts

  • Thumbnail for Interview with Adrian Smith

    Interview with Adrian Smith

    There’s a cognitive dissonance going on like you’re constantly being told something is true but witnessing contradictions in behavior. And internal contradictions. George Orwell talks about this, you know—double think. You encounter two sets of facts and they don’t match up. In order to continue to believe a lie, you have to put one of these beliefs in a memory hole and you have to forget about it or bury it.

  • Thumbnail for Our Spiritual Inheritance

    Our Spiritual Inheritance

    The Father’s consciousness and spirit flows out from him in an unending stream. It is His reflected glory, initiating through their singing of the hymns, that disposes the Totalities to grasp their own Selfhood, their own “individuality, seeds, and thoughts,” and that they will “live forever,” along with the Son. We are of that inheritance. We have inherited the dispositions and qualities of the Fullness of the Aeons, the Totalities of the Father. And to awaken to Selfhood, the way to do it isn’t to focus egoistically upon ourselves—it’s actually to focus on the Father, and to give glory to the Father. And it’s in that reflected glory that we can see ourselves.

  • Thumbnail for Knowledge, Not Information

    Knowledge, Not Information

    The presumption in the academic community is that we’re developing knowledge. But all the best we can do is to develop well founded beliefs according to Plato and for the reasons that I’ve just argued for. Plato believed that learning, properly conducted, was a way of recalling what is already known by a person. So those who attended Plato’s Academy were hoping to recall the forms in the ethereal world and therefore have knowledge. So in Plato’s Academy, they weren’t strictly scholastic. They were trying to recall, because that’s the only way we can know.

  • Thumbnail for Misplaced Hopes

    Misplaced Hopes

    Are you better off than you were four years ago? Are you better off than you were ten years ago? Are the cities safer? Are the homeless housed? Are the drug addicts taken care of and given a clean and better life? Has cancer been cured? Do immunizations really help? So without stepping on any of my listeners’ toes, I would say no, probably not. And that’s what I’m going to try to explain to you today.

  • Thumbnail for Finding Gnosis, Finding God

    Finding Gnosis, Finding God

    The God Above All Gods wants to be known. This God wants us to know we are loved.

  • Thumbnail for Aeons, Archons, Angels, or Aliens?     A Gnostic Interpretation of Ancient Aliens Theory

    Aeons, Archons, Angels, or Aliens?     A Gnostic Interpretation of Ancient Aliens Theory

    This episode pays attention to the question continually raised by the ancient aliens theorists—were the “gods” of the pre-flood era merely misinterpreted alien visitors with alien tech? Are the “fallen angels” of the Book Enoch angels from God, or were they actually ancient astronauts who moved to earth and occasionally married human women? It is said that the worldwide flood was sent by God to wipe out the angel-human offspring known as Nephilim. What were the Nephilim and what God would have wiped out the entire earth and everyone on it to kill them off, and how is it that some humans were spared by warnings from “angels”?

  • Thumbnail for Revisiting Reincarnation

    Revisiting Reincarnation

    That the “you” that exists between material incarnations is nothing but your karmic record is proved by one of our basic assertions that all units of consciousness are fundamentally one and the same, and that all units of consciousness begin their individuated journey as perfect echoes of God. Then it follows that “I” develop as a result of my choices and the choices of others—“I” am my perfect unit of consciousness enshrouded in karma and the memes that my karma attracts.

  • Thumbnail for John Munter Interview Part 2

    John Munter Interview Part 2

    This week we’ll hear part two of my interview with gnostic John Munter. He’s a follower of the Gospel of Thomas, which is one of the more popular gnostic books. John offers a unique method of interpreting the Gospel of Thomas.

  • Thumbnail for Demiurgic Justice

    Demiurgic Justice

    A podcast listener recently asked me to amend my categorization of the Demiurge as a malevolent force. He asked me to read the “Epistle to Flora” from The Gnostic Scriptures to see that the Demiurge is a force for good on the right hand side of the ledger. In other words, is the Demiurge evil or good? Turns out it’s a controversial subject in the Gnostic community. That is what we consider on today’s podcast.

  • Thumbnail for The Truth About Eternal Damnation

    The Truth About Eternal Damnation

    Those who have not accepted the forgiveness and redemption of the Christ do indeed suffer when they pass away from this life. This suffering is not handed down by an angry God but is rather their own recognition and guilt over their sins and shortcomings. The more sinful an unredeemed person is, the more they suffer when they die. The suffering comes from their own conscience as they see clearly the path of their ego-driven life and the true condition of their soul. After a period of denying their need for a Messiah to rescue them from this place where they have been set aside, they will call out to the Savior to rescue them. The moment they repent of all that they now see clearly as their accumulated faults, they will be redeemed.

  • Thumbnail for Consciousness and Categorical Errors

    Consciousness and Categorical Errors

    Consciousness does not arise out of information. Consciousness predates information, particularly the information that comes out of this universe. You can add up all of the information on the Internet and out of all of the libraries in the world and you will not begin to touch the consciousness of the Father or God because it exists on a different plane. It is different in kind. It is different in category, it is not simply more. Consciousness does not arise out of the category of knowledge.

  • Thumbnail for Not By Works

    Not By Works

    If you reject the Christ because you believe in the strength of your Ego more than the Christ’s, then you’re not on the glory beam. We need the pattern of Christ’s human inheritance plus the Father’s perfection and love to overlay upon our souls. This lends us the perfection of Christ that redeems us from the karma and memes we have generated. That is the only surefire way to achieve full enlightenment.

  • Thumbnail for Interview: Scott S. Smith, part 2

    Interview: Scott S. Smith, part 2

    Part Two of my interview with fellow Gnostic, Scott S. Smith. He attends the Ecclesia Gnostica Church in Los Angeles and regularly appears on Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio and a slew of other Gnostic podcasts. In this episode, we discuss reincarnation and Scott’s pragmatic approach to Gnosticism.

  • Thumbnail for Interview: Scott S. Smith, part 1

    Interview: Scott S. Smith, part 1

    Part One of my interview with fellow Gnostic, Scott S. Smith.

  • Thumbnail for Free Will Is Essential

    Free Will Is Essential

    Free will is at the core of our being. It was the free will of Logos that caused him to leave the Fullness and fall. It was the free will of the restored Logos and the Totalities that created the Second Order Powers. And it is the free will of the Powers, by way of our Aeonic inheritance, that directs ours lives here below. It is our own free will that causes us to forget about the Father and the Fullness of God from which we come. It is our own free will that allows us to bow to the rule of the Demiurge and dig our own graves. Because of the nature of free will, we turn to an outside source to assist our remembrance and salvation. This Aeon is known as the Christ–the Son of the Father’s will and of the good pleasure of the ALL.