Tag: gnostic cosmology
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Neverending War
Whereas those of the deficiency arose from the egoic thought that led Logos to overreach and fall, “those of the remembrance” arose from Logos having the good thought of the Father and the Fullness. Those of the deficiency represent phantoms and confusion, whereas the new fruit, the Second Order Powers, represent the virtues of the ALL and life that emanates through the Holy Spirit of the Father. These Second Order Powers were fruited one by one and sent down to populate the space within the Boundary in order to bring life and love into the chaos and confusion.
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Second Order Powers–The New Pleroma of Logos
When Logos turned away from the presumptuous thought and began to remember the Fullness and the Father, he generated a new fractal Pleroma within himself that contained all of the images of the beings of thought. Only this time, since Logos was within the Boundary when he remembered the Fullness and the Father, his new Pleroma was fitted into the Boundary. This differed from the original Pleroma of Logos that Fell and deserted him because this Pleroma was able to work within the Boundary with reason and purpose, unlike the imitations of the deficiency who lacked the Father’s consciousness and the ability to pull themselves out of chaos.
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The Demiurge and the Boundary
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 book of Genesis attributes these actions of the Demiurge to Jehovah when it says, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”
The Demiurge is in charge of the mud, the material, the hard rocky places–at the small scale the dirt and the elements, and at the large scale the rocky planets and the stars in the heavens. If there are creatures on a planet, they coat the outside of the dead rocky planet. Life only comes from the Father. Life is top-down. -
The Fall and the Deficiency
Logos had not realized the impossibility of approaching the illimitable consciousness of the Father. Logos could “not attain him,” because the Father “did not receive him.” Because of his self-exaltation, another good synonym for ego, Logos fully expected to reach the Father and to reproduce his own glorious reflection that would populate a new Paradise of emanations based upon himself. In other words, Ego’s opinion was not based on reality or truth, only his high opinion of his own capabilities. Abandoning the Aeonic rules and his brothers in the Fullness, Logos “went beyond himself” and this overreach brought the sickness of self-doubt onto his soul.
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Logos—His Birth, Inheritance, and Fall
The final Aeon, Logos, found himself sitting on top of the Hierarchy of the Fullness. And, since he contained within himself a copy of all of the other Aeons, he became confused as to his proper role and function and he mistook his own will for the will of the Fullness. Sitting up there on top, Logos had no other Aeons as his direct neighbors on either side, unlike all of the other Aeons within the great pyramidal shape that forms the Hierarchy. Nor was there any Aeon stationed above his location. Logos was positionally exalted above his peers, as if he were the King of the Hierarchy. There was no one and no thing above him other than the Father. Logos overreached and Fell.
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The Generation of the Aeons and Logos
It is said that although the Father put an unquenchable thirst to align themselves with the One into the minds of the Fullness, he did not reveal to them the Father’s ineffable nature and the impossibility of reuniting with him and surviving to tell the tale. This was doubtless to keep alive the hope of reunification with the Father as a motive for continually giving glory.
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Introduction to A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel
And then around 2016, I read a copy of the Nag Hammadi Scriptures. At first I found the ideas shocking. These were the very heresies my conservative Christianity had warned me away from. According to Christians, these beliefs were excluded from our modern versions of the Bible to protect the church from theological misinformation. I discovered that radical repackaging had removed from the New Testament a type of spiritual belief that was well- known to Jesus and his followers. This belief system, commonly called Gnosticism, describes Christianity differently than does our modern Church. Gnosticism makes sense of most of the more mysterious aspects of Christianity, including humanity’s role in the great scheme of things, and common questions such as “why is there evil in the world?”
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The Son, Part 2: The Generation of the Aeons
Last week’s episode was supposed to be about the Son. But we’ve hardly heard anything about the Son himself. We hear about the Father being indescribable and we hear about the infinite number of spirits of the Church that form the body of the Son. But we really haven’t heard much in the way of descriptions of the Son itself. This is because the only way that the Son can be described is through the Aeons, which is to say, through the fractals that come out of the Son. As we trace the path of emanations flowing out of the inconceivable Father and through the barely conceivable Son, we become more and more concrete in our ability to understand the nature of God. It is when we enter the realm of the Aeons that we can begin to recognize the panoply of properties of the Father and Son.
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The Emanation of the Son and the ALL
The Son reflects the Father’s boundless greatness and love. The Son possesses every trait of the Father, for the Son is a complete encapsulation of the Father in which it dwells. Every trait of the Father is expressed now as a singularity, and that singularity is called the Son.
And yet although it was a singular manifestation of the Father, the moment the Son was formed, it was no longer alone, for not only the Son, but what is called the ALL, or the Totalities, arose at once. The ALL immediately appeared as the offspring of the Son, because the Son could not help itself from bringing others into existence, even as it was brought into existence by the Father.
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The God Above All Gods
I like to begin with the cosmos as it unfolded and rolled out. The word for that sort of study is “cosmogony,” which is defined as the study of the origins of the universe. This makes the most sense to me–to start at the very beginning and then to go through the entire process of how everything came to be and who the principal players are and then, after that is established, to see how that applies to our lives. Then we can ask, “Why are we here? Is there a purpose to our lives? How should we live?” After that, we can finally consider the termination of the universe and what happens after we die. All of these questions are answered very precisely in the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi. This knowledge is known as “gnosis.”
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Redeeming the Demiurge and Creation
This episode finishes up our deep dive into the Tripartite Tractate’s explanation of the Third Order of Powers. We learn about their relationship to the Christ, the ALL, the Fullness and the Father, and how they go about their job of redeeming us Second Order Powers and the Demiurge.
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Third Order Powers–the Army of Christ
“Then from the harmony, in a joyous willingness which had come into being, they brought forth the fruit, which was a begetting from the harmony, a unity, a possession of the Totalities, revealing the countenance of the Father, of whom the aeons thought as they gave glory and prayed for help for their brother with a wish in which the Father counted himself with them. Thus, it was willingly and gladly that they bring forth the fruit.”
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Praise and Glory–Aeonic Romance
The Father loved and admired the Son, and the Son loved and admired the Father. These two were well pleased with themselves, and they gave praise and glory to one another. From their exchange of “kisses,” the ALL arose.
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“Why Are We Here?” A Listener Question
Why did the Fullness of God find it necessary to create the Second Order of Powers and send them (us) down here to redeem the demiurge? Why wasn’t the demiurge simply abandoned after the Fall?
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The Birth and Nature of Logos
A listener asks why it was necessary to populate this Fallen material world. Why not just abandon the Demiurge down here? Why send the Second Order of Powers into this rocky place on a mission of redemption? Why couldn’t we just stay up above in our ethereal Paradise?
Answering this question requires an in-depth explanation of the origin and nature of aeons. Cyd examines aeonic life as depicted by the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi scriptures. Then we look at one aeon in particular, Logos, as we consider why it reached for the Father and Fell.