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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Tag: ego

  • Thumbnail for Emissaries of Consciousness

    Emissaries of Consciousness

    Logos and the Aeons sent down representations of themselves into our universe, each one being a much more fabulous original than these deficient copies of the Imitation. And so these organizational patterns and names and faces of the Aeons came to bring order and stability and solidity. That solidity is the new economy, the new ecology of this universe. “He generated manifest images of the living visages, mingling the Logos with himself entirely. Therefore, those who came forth from him are great, just as that which is truly great.” That’s us, folks!

  • Thumbnail for Ego, Fall, Deficiency

    Ego, Fall, Deficiency

    When Logos overreached because of presumptuous egoic thought and fell into the darkness that is ignorance, he shattered into a confusing jumble of disconnected parts. These pieces of the Shattered Aeon were sicknesses—small dark, ignorant, divided, roiling with chaos. They reflected neither the glory of the originals and the Fullness, nor the ecology of the hierarchy. Because they were no longer arranged in the pattern of the hierarchy, they forgot their functions and their names.

  • Thumbnail for If everybody is going to heaven anyway, what’s the point of being virtuous?

    If everybody is going to heaven anyway, what’s the point of being virtuous?

    Welcome to Gnostic Insights. My name is Dr. Cyd Ropp, and I’m your host. In 2019, I posted an article to my new Gnostic Gospel…

  • Thumbnail for Free Will. What is it? Do you have it?

    Free Will. What is it? Do you have it?

    Everything that is living, everything that is alive, everything that’s gestated and is born into this world is a Second Order power. And we come directly from the Fullness. We bring down the remembrance of the God Above All Gods. We bring down with us the remembrance of love and glory and our aeonic parents who are in heaven. So we have all of these memories that the Demiurge doesn’t even know about. And what else did we bring down with us? We brought down the free will of the Aeons and the ALL and the Son because we are of that direct lineage that flows downward into this material universe.

  • 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 Karma and Memes

    Karma and Memes

    Our karma is the karma that we generate that causes the memes that we cling to to hold on to us. We hold those memes and they are bound to us like a covering through our karma, and my karma is different than your karma. Everybody’s karma is unique to the individual. When you pass away, your karma is momentarily laid aside so that you can see the truth in the in between place after your material body dies.

  • Thumbnail for Birth of the Demiurge

    Birth of the Demiurge

    What is the Demiurge and how did it come about? What was the presumptuous thought that led the youngest Aeon to overreach and fall and how does that relate to Self and Ego? Why would the Father set things up so that this Aeon could make a unilateral decision that resulted in the Fall? Was it a mistake? Did God cause this Aeon to create evil? How is such a thing even possible? Was it God’s will that it should fall?

  • Thumbnail for Fear Not–We Are Going Home

    Fear Not–We Are Going Home

    “Know thyself” was an important maxim in ancient Greece. “Know thyself” refers to your big S Self. Knowing your Self puts you in alignment with the Fullness and the Father. By mining your gnosis now, and meditating upon the Father, the Son, and the Christ, you prepare your Self to transcend death before you cross over.

  • Thumbnail for Garden of the 3-Fold Order

    Garden of the 3-Fold Order

    This week’s episode takes a sneak peek into Chapter 13 of my upcoming book, “A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel.” Chapter 13 is about the way ethereal consciousness came to create physical matter and how this consciousness interfaces with that matter. This chapter is ground zero for consciousness studies–providing a logical framework for the flow and process of consciousness—how it was in the beginning, and how it instantiates down here.

  • Thumbnail for So What?

    So What?

    A fascinating thing about ideologies is that most people are not even aware that there is such a thing as competing ideologies. Their own ideology is what is called “naturalized,” which means that they hold it so deeply that they do not recognize it as an ideology and that there may be other valid points of view. They don’t realize that their own worldview shapes and filters what they see and the options open for their behavior. They think that those who disagree with them are wrong, crazy, or evil.

  • Thumbnail for Archetypes–Fractals of the Fullness

    Archetypes–Fractals of the Fullness

    In the hierarchy of the Fullness of God and similarly, within the Pleroma of our bodies, we have every single type of unit of consciousness derived from the Hierarchy of the Son, from the cells on up through our governing Self unit of consciousness. Our governing Self sits on the top of our personal hierarchical Pleroma. We are all fractals. Within my body there are countless fractals of the Fullness of God, and each one of them is doing its job to keep me alive and walking around, because they are operating according to the Simple Golden Rule of reaching out and holding hands with their neighbors, and working together with information, with coherence, and with love to work for the betterment of all. 

  • Thumbnail for Units of Conciousness–Our Aeonic Inheritance

    Units of Conciousness–Our Aeonic Inheritance

    Our personalities reflect our heavenly or Aeonic inheritance, and that includes both our Self and our originating Egos. It is our Egos that go about this world interfacing with others and collecting memes. Our Egos are all different, whereas our Selfs are all the same. My Ego is only concerned with me, because that is the job of Ego—to take care of and serve the needs of my body. This function of Ego is selfish, but not inherently bad, naughty, or evil; it’s the Ego doing its job.

  • Thumbnail for Lust  for Domination

    Lust for Domination

    No sooner did the Second Order of Powers begin manifesting on the material stage, they found themselves in mortal combat with the shadows of the imitation.

    The Second Order Powers “fought against the order of those of the likeness, while the order of those of the likeness wages war against the representations and acts against it alone, because of its wrath. As a result, they were submerged in forces and natures in accord with the condition of mutual assault, having lust for power and all other things of this sort. It is from these that the vain love of glory draws all of them to the desire of the lust for power, while none of them has the exalted thought nor acknowledges it…”

  • Thumbnail for The New Economy Arises–the Boundary and the Demiurge

    The New Economy Arises–the Boundary and the Demiurge

    As Logos retreated to its own in the Fullness, the Father placed a Boundary around the area containing that which had been produced as a consequence of the Fall. The purpose of this Boundary was to separate finitude from infinity, ignorance from truth, and light from darkness.
    Logos appointed an Archon to bring order to the chaos. This Archon is what we call the Demiurge. The Demiurge is able to control matter. “The things which he has spoken he does.” The Demiurge strictly controls everything in our material portion of the universe using strong strings of power, like a puppet master.

  • Thumbnail for Ego Falls and Forgets

    Ego Falls and Forgets

    The Fall was caused by an act of Ego falling away from the One Self. The Tripartite Tractate calls the Ego “presumptuous thought.” And isn’t that what egoic thought is? Egoic thought places the focus of thought on one’s own desires without regard to others.