Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:45 — 46.3MB)
For regular Gnostics Insights, subscribe here. Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS
This week we look at two “Gnostic Gospels” known as Tractate 7 (“That the Greatest Human Evil Is Unacquaintance with God”) and Poimandres. These tractates are considered “Hermetic” works, unlike the book we usually study which is considered a “Valentinian” tractate. These two tracts, purportedly written by a Greco-Egyptian god known as Hermes Trismegistus, support the concepts we have been studying, particularly as it relates to “acquaintance,” their word for gnosis. Here we find that the ancient Egyptians were also believers in the Father and the Fullness Above as the singular source of Truth and the gnosis that comes through pure intellect.
“People, where are you rushing, so intoxicated and having so fully drunk the strong wine of reasoning unaccompanied by acquaintance? You cannot hold it; already you are about to throw it up. Stop, get sober! Look up with the eyes of the mind–and if you cannot all do so, at least those of you who can! For the imperfection that comes from unacquaintance [lack of gnosis] is flooding the entire earth, corrupting the soul along with the body that encloses it and preventing it from putting in at the havens of safety.” Tractate 7
“Why, O inhabitants of earth, have you given yourselves up to death, even though you have the ability to share in immortality? Repent, O you who have traveled with error and participated in lack of acquaintance! Depart from the darksome light, share in immortality, give up corruption!” Poimandres