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: The Father

  • Thumbnail for The True Nature of the God Above All Gods

    The True Nature of the God Above All Gods

    Perhaps you were raised in an extremely cruel household with extremely vindictive parents, or schoolteachers, or somebody got to you and, in the name of God, inflicted cruelty upon you. Then you have come to accidentally transpose their human cruelty onto God, because they told you to. But that’s not God, by definition, you see? And when I say, by definition, that means, like, cold is not hot, by definition. Cold is cold. And if you’re going to start arguing, oh no, cold is hot, well, then you’re not talking about cold, you’re talking about hot. Do you see what I mean? And if you have been rejecting God, the God Above All Gods, because you have this view of God as merciless and vindictive, cruel, illogical, unfair, unjust, take comfort, because that’s not God you’re talking about.

    Now, it may be the small g god of this world. It could be the guy whose best friend is Satan, because remember, that is a small g god of confusion. And its main job is to cause you to forget that you come from transcendent goodness, that you come from above, from the God Above All Gods, and that you do have freedom. You do have free will. You are meant to inherit joy. You are to do good works, and to be happy, and to be in love, and to love everybody else.

    Don’t let some evil archon, or evil Demiurge, or evil human, redefine God in such a way that you reject God, because that’s the mistake. That’s a categorical error. And that’s why I say, take comfort, have joy, receive the love that was meant for you.

  • Thumbnail for Three Glories

    Three Glories

    “For no one can conceive of him or think of him or draw near to that place toward the exalted, toward the truly preexistent. [That would be the original Father they’re talking about.] But every name that is thought or spoken about him is brought forth in glorification as a trace of him, according to the capacity of each one of those who give him glory.”

    So this is saying that the full glory of the Father cannot be known. The Son can be known because he is coexistent with the Totalities of the ALL. So they are him and he is them. But the Father can be perceived as this trace. And in other places, it says like a sweet odor wafting to your nose.

  • Thumbnail for The Father of All Consciousness

    The Father of All Consciousness

    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? And after that, we can finally consider the final roll-up 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 sort of knowledge is known as gnosis.

    Today we begin at the very beginning, and that has to do with what is called the Father. This story begins before the beginning of time, because there was no time before our material cosmos existed.

  • Thumbnail for Universal Salvation pt 3

    Universal Salvation pt 3

    The idea that the God Above All Gods would condemn people to everlasting torment with no goal other than eternal punishment makes no moral or logical sense. It goes against the very nature of a loving and just God.

  • Thumbnail for Father, Son, ALL–Love Unfolding

    Father, Son, ALL–Love Unfolding

    The Father’s basic consciousness is not thoughts, but rather love, the sensation of knowing what we call love. So this consciousness simply is, without time, without any prior existence, unchangeable, unmovable, without beginning, without end, utterly quiet, utterly still, utterly alone. This Father is often described as all-knowing, but what is there to know? All-seeing, but what is there to see? All-loving, but what is there to love? Omnipotent wisdom, will, but to what end? There’s nothing there.
    Now imagine that this consciousness gives birth to a emanation of itself. In the Simple Explanation blog, we call this a fractal. In the religious texts, they call it a Son.

  • Thumbnail for The Son of the God Above All Gods

    The Son of the God Above All Gods

    How is it that we can claim to know these characteristics of the Father—his sweetness, his greatness, and so forth? Well, that is because the Father reveals his own characteristics through what is called the Son, and the Son is actually the God that we are able to relate to. The Son is the relatable father to us and to the Aeons, whereas the Son is the only Son of that Father who is otherwise inexpressible. The Son does reflect and incorporate the characteristics of the Father, so it seems to me that we can infer the characteristics of the Father from the Son, and that’s what I think the author of the Tripartite Tractate did—inferred what the characteristics of the Father must be by examining the characteristics of the Son.

  • Thumbnail for The Nature of the Gnostic God

    The Nature of the Gnostic God

    The Father is the ground state of consciousness, and so this is why we begin to build out from the Father the flow of consciousness.
    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.”

  • Thumbnail for The Gnostic Lord’s Prayer

    The Gnostic Lord’s Prayer

    In the Lord’s prayer, Jesus suggests that we pray for the Father’s will to be done on Earth as it is in heaven. So here we are trying to bring the perfection and the love and all of the virtues and the knowledge, the true knowledge, onto the Earth. That’s the job of the 2nd order powers. We embody the Fullness of God on this fallen plane. That’s what it means: “Your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.” And that will is expressed through us.

  • Thumbnail for Gnostic Cosmos Origin Story

    Gnostic Cosmos Origin Story

    To church folks this will initially sound like heresy, while to non-believers it will sound too churchy. To those folks who have fallen away from the church because they can’t reconcile inconsistencies between the Old and the New Testament, it will come as a welcome relief. And to those people who have never believed in God, this version of Christianity may be exactly what they haven’t been expecting and didn’t realize they were hoping for.

  • Thumbnail for The Nicene Creed

    The Nicene Creed

    The Nicene Creed is a meme bundle of what one must believe in order to call themselves a Christian. And it came to be that anyone who didn’t believe in those edicts of the Nicene Creed was labeled a heretic, and anyone such as myself that may profess other beliefs, other gnostic beliefs, for example, well, those are heretics because they don’t believe in the Nicene Creed. So let’s look at the Nicene Creed today and see what it is that we agree or disagree with, as far as this Gnostic Reformation goes.

  • Thumbnail for The Father of Consciousness

    The Father of Consciousness

    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.”

  • Thumbnail for The God Above All Gods

    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.”

  • Thumbnail for Gnosis and the Tao Te Ching, v. 21, 4, & 48

    Gnosis and the Tao Te Ching, v. 21, 4, & 48

    In Gnostic terminology, the Tao spoken of by Lao Tzu refers to the Father. The principles of organization that have informed our universe since the moment before creation refers to the Fullness of God. Non-being refers to clearing your personal Unit of Consciousness of egoic memes and karma to reveal your truest Self. Non-action refers to allowing the Fullness of God to direct your actions for the greater good.

  • Thumbnail for One Gnostic God; Many Inhabited Worlds

    One Gnostic God; Many Inhabited Worlds

    If 5.3 trillion planets are thought to support life, how many of them would recognize the Gnostic Gospel? This episode offers a form of logical proof that the universe must be teeming with Second Order Powers sent by the Pleroma–enough to counter the Demiurge.

  • Thumbnail for The Gnostic God

    The Gnostic God

    The Gnostic God is known as “The Father” and “The God Above All Gods.” This Father is definitely not the wrathful God of the Old Testament called Jehovah.