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: Pleroma of the Christ

  • Thumbnail for Army of Love

    Army of Love

    In our modern Christian understanding, we think of the Christ as a singular entity—the Son. This is true, but our gnostic understanding adds the Pleroma of the Third Order of Powers into the equation. Even more limiting, Christians think of the Christ as only coming to Earth in the body of the man named Jesus of Nazareth. But the Christ also reflects and is able to redeem every representation that has ever come into this universe. Because of this, each one of us, whether we be humans or dogs, plants, insects, or skin cells, has a personal representation of the Christ that we can immediately recognize. You and I have our own, personalized, Third Order Power that brings us redemption. This is the true nature of the redeeming body and blood of Jesus—not that He hangs upon a cross until dead and is subsequently resurrected, but that his fractal story represents resurrection for all of us Second Order Powers, each with our own cross to bear.

  • Thumbnail for As Above, So Below pt. 2

    As Above, So Below pt. 2

    Our mission is to bring love into the world and to ultimately remind the Demiurge of its origins in the Fullness above. The Demiurge doesn’t know this, of course, and it thinks we are simply more material for it to control. It doesn’t know we are conscious, and it thinks we are chaotic because it does not understand the free will we bring into creation.

  • Thumbnail for Redeeming the Demiurge

    Redeeming the Demiurge

    The redeemed Pleroma of Logos, redeemed by the Christ, is the final resting place for the Demiurge once it remembers and recognizes its brothers in the Fullness and the Father of them all through the power of Christ, because it took that power of Christ coming in to this material world through us in order for the Demiurge to remember. The Third Order of Powers is called the aeon, the place, the thought of the Logos who returned to his stability. It’s known also as the synagogue of salvation, the storehouse, the bride, the kingdom, the church, the image of the light. It is set above the Second Order and the deficiency. It has the form of matter, but the constitution of the Christ, each one containing the Pleroma of the All.

    These are the manifest images of the living visages, not arising from division, but from the unity of the aeons of the Father and the good original thought that existed prior to the rise of ego. While the Second Order Powers, us, each arose at the countenance of a single aeon, the Third Order Powers are in harmony and resemble the entire assembly of indivisible light.

  • Thumbnail for In the Origin, there was Logos

    In the Origin, there was Logos

    “In the origin there was the Logos and the Logos was present with GOD (the God Above All Gods) and the Logos was god. This one was present with GOD in the origin. All things came to be through him (Logos) and without him came not a single thing that has come to be. In him was life and this life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not conquer it.” (John 1:1-6)

  • Thumbnail for The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated

    The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated

    Here’s a treat for you. This is the entire Gnostic Gospel Illuminated book read by the author, Cyd Ropp. This is the little book published in 2019 that was the springboard for all of the gnostic work that followed, including this podcast and the new, much longer, book that is about to be released.

    This is the simplest presentation of gnosis that you will ever find. Only the essential gnosis was included. It is all based upon the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi texts. The gnosis you will find here is the type of gnosis that proceeds from an initial thought–the first thought of the Originating Source. That thought then flows outward and through a few levels downward until it manifests within all of us living creatures here in the cosmos. There are no fables in this gnosis–only the reasonable outflow of the path of consciousness. This is the story of consciousness.

  • Thumbnail for Fractal Pleromas

    Fractal Pleromas

    It turns out that every entity, with the exception of the originating Father and Son, is not only part of a larger Pleroma, it is itself a Pleroma that contains a host of smaller entities. We are all fractals of the Fullness and we are all nested iterations of the Father’s fractal consciousness.

  • Thumbnail for Heavenly Pleromas

    Heavenly Pleromas

    This Pleroma of ours is called the Second Order of Powers, and we proceed out of the Pleroma of Logos. We Second Order Powers were created through the Totalities of the original Fullness giving glory to the Father alongside Logos. Together, they prayed with an intention to send life into the fallen world below. We came forth as fruit from the Pleroma of Logos, and the Pleroma of Logos was itself a fractal of the Fullness. We are called Second Order Powers to distinguish us from the First Order Powers—the Aeons of the Fullness—out of which we are fractal iterations, twice removed.

  • Thumbnail for Redeeming the Demiurge and Creation

    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.