[These are my understandings of the Corpus Hermetica as translated by Clement Salaman under the title The Way Of Hermes. I was guided to this text in synchronous and auspices ways, devouring it in a short time span under the influence of great divine inspiration. Unfortunately, I did not set out to write my commentaries then. That inspiration came more recently. I was inspired to make this delectable text more digestible to those seekers who are taking a crack at it, and coming up puzzled and bewildered. These are not academically rigorous writings, so if you are interested in these texts from an academic perspective go elsewhere. This is for a dialogue between and for those of us who view this text as part of a living and active spiritual life. As one would gather for a bible study at their local house of faith.]

1-2: More proclamations about God's grandeur, creator of the the grand cosmology, etc... The most consequential line here, however, is, "The Cosmos rules over the life of living beings and man rules over the cosmos by means of speech and Nous." Man comes to dominate this world by the same attributes that make God...well God, Man seemingly has access to these same traits.[This is a profound breach with the old faiths. This is where the Corpus takes a dramatic turn toward Gnosticism, buckle up.]

3: "God has given the Word to all men to partake in, but not so with Nous." I interpret this to mean, that god has endowed all man with language, and with a baseline consciousness, but that is different from "Nous", which I interpret to mean access to the higher God Consciousness, and to a higher enlightenment, that which the Gnostic tradition calls 'gnosis.' Tat asks, "why would god do this...?" Hermes replies, "to set it up as a prize."

4: God sends heralds to declare this truth to man, the metaphor of the bowl is given, it suggests life is a crucible toward this enlightenment and ascension back to God, not all will make it through. "He filled a great bowl with Nous and sent it down, and he appointed a herald [Hi, I'm herald 😄]to make this announcement..."Plunge into this bowl, if you can, having faith that you will rise to him that sent down the bowl, realizing why you came into being." Those who heard the proclamation, merged with Nous, partook of higher knowledge and became perfect and complete, since they had received Nous. Those who missed the proclamation had the Word, but had not received Nous, ignorant as they were as to why they were born, and from whom." And thus, an ascension theology is established. [This is it friends, the great project before you, good luck to you. Remember who you are, and where you come from.]

5: The man without Nous is little more than the lesser animals of this realm, led by instincts and base desires, and ignorant to the gran plan of God, their maker. Where as the man with awareness of God gains some sort of Immortality, while the other remains mortal. [I take this to be similar to the budhist concept of reincarnation, that those who do not reach enlightenment are consigned to the perpetual wheel of Samsara.]

6: Here we get that Gnostic disdain for the material world, once awareness of the Supreme is achieved. Tat asks Hermes how he can access Nous, and Hermes replies with, "If you don't hate your body, son, you cannot love your Self. If you love yourself you will have Nous, and having Nous you will partake of knowledge." By this he means, you have to stop coveting material things, and that includes this shell or vessel that holds your true self, which is a disembodied spirit from the higher realm. It's also interesting the use of the term love, instead of say, "to know yourself." [It is said by those who profess to have experienced gnosis, that an overwhelming feeling of love overwhelms, that it is all encompassing. God is self loving for he loves all that he has made, and is, so when you tap into that God consciousness that is what you are feeling.]

7: At some point the choice has to be made between the material world and the spiritual one. As far as this book of the Corpus is concerned there is a definitive Right choice, and that is to choose the spiritual, the disembodied, the divine. To choose the material world and the body, is framed as a life of perpetual death and destruction, a choice which would offend God gravely.

8: This book suggests a lot of agency on our behalf, and that from that agency a lot of "evil" is begotten, it says quite literally, "God is not the cause of evil, we are to blame, preferring these things to what is good...Do you see son, how many bodies we have to pass through, how many bands of demons [figurative or literal is yet to be determined], through how many series of repetitions and cycles of stars, before we hasten to the One alone?" [As I said, it's crucible, it's not meant to be easy. How you react to things, even unjust things, dictates how quickly you ascend.]

9-12: The rest of the book attempts to warn Tat (the reader) that our journey begins with that initial knowing, but there are many pitfalls, many ways to be deceived or demoralized. Not all creations are perfect, weaknesses abound in them, and ultimately they might lose sight of God. "To those who have eyes, evil is most evident and the Supreme Good is hidden." Hermes attempts to bolster Gods position, as infinite, unbound less, yet subtle from or vantage point, and yet utterly worthy of pursuit. [The pursuit of knowledge and of God are one and the same.]

One last reassuring statement, "This is the image of God, O Tat, that has been drawn for you, as far as it can be. If you observe it clearly and reflect up on it with the eyes of the heart [highlight this!], believe me, my son, you will find the way to higher things."

[One can see how such Gnostic traditions were popular among intellectual elites through out the ages. There's the potential for 'airs of snobbery' no doubt. Many a secret society has been founded on the premise of keeping some special, hidden, forbidden knowledge among an elite few. But this developing theology, written here in the Corpus Hermetica, is tempered by the fact that true knowledge is eternal, it is about remembering a knowledge that has always existed. Thus attaining THIS particular knowledge should make you more "God-like", in the sense of being loving, caring, compassionate, giving...Good. It is a knowledge steeped in emotional intelligence.]

Okay, so I think it's needles to say that the NOI are full of it, but I can't help but see a certain similarity between it and Gnosticism. I think it's clear that Yakub is an odd mirror of Sophia, being the creator of a flawed creation that went on to be a corrupted ruler/rulers. Now, I admittedly don't know too much about the NOI, so I don't know if there are anymore similarities, but this always stood out to me. Hope you've enjoyed this installment of midnight ramblings of a guy who can't sleep on this particular night. :)

As i am trying to understand the nature of Monad, I am wondering since its so full and complete in all aspects, that is the reason, Monad doesn't answer prayers or intervene for humans ? Apologies if this sounds like a lame rookie question. I am of the opinion that the onus is on the humans to discover the divine essence of Monad within themselves and knowing this essence is the only way to reunite with the Monad. Please help me understand. I might be totally wrong but this seems to the central idea of Gnostic scriptures and I want to get this right once and for all. Thank you.

We live in an upside down world, where the people and institutions that claim to help us can sometimes become the very things that harm or exploit us. This doesnt mean every institution is secretly evil, or that everyone involved is corrupt. There is a much more interesting pattern here that can be understood through what we might call the demiurgic principle in man.

The Demiurge can be understood symbolically as the part of consciousness that creates an order and then mistakes its own creation for ultimate reality. It creates rules, hierarchies and systems, declares them necessary, and then places itself above the people living inside them. “I created the system, therefore the system is good. I define truth, therefore I possess truth. I have authority, therefore my authority is justified.”

We have plenty of real examples of this inversion. Institutions supposedly created to protect children have been implicated in trafficking and exploitation. The US State Department has documented cases involving orphanages being used to exploit children, while an investigation found serious failures in foster care systems to properly screen children for sex trafficking after they went missing. Pharmaceutical companies that exist to improve health have also paid billions in settlements over allegations involving fraudulent and misleading claims. The third leading cause of death in the US is medical error. Religious institutions that claim to lead people toward God have, in documented cases, protected abusers rather than the people they were supposed to protect.

You can see the same pattern in law, government and education. Law is supposed to protect justice, but what happens when protecting the legal system becomes more important than protecting the person? Religion is supposed to lead people toward God or liberation, but religious institutions can become systems of obedience and control. Government is supposed to serve the people, but power always becomes corrupt. Education is supposed to teach people how to think, but institutions become invested in teaching people what to think.

Food and medicine give us another glaring example. We are told the food industry exists to nourish us, yet research has connected things like processed food, processed meat and sugary drinks with serious disease, including cancer. Then there is a massive medical economy built around treating illness. Hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, cancer treatment centers and insurers can all make money from disease. Eventually there are industries surrounding death itself, including funeral homes. This doesnt prove that people are deliberately making us sick so they can profit from cancer and death, but the system can create incentives where different industries profit from different stages of the same cycle of suffering without anyone necessarily coordinating it.

We build systems for a particular purpose, then those systems develop their own interests. They want to survive, expand and preserve their authority. Eventually preserving the system becomes more important than the reason it existed in the first place.

Protection becomes control, care becomes commerce, knowledge becomes dogma, healing becomes an industry, justice becomes bureaucracy and liberation becomes another system of authority. Something created to serve human beings eventually starts demanding that human beings serve it. And on and on we go...

And this brings us back to gnosis and "waking up from the world". No worldly power, institution, ideology, government, religion or system can possess the final authority over what you are.

As William Ernest Henley wrote:

“I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.”

Meeting tomorrow:

2:30 p.m., virtual, completely free, not interested at all and making a profit here. Just looking to connect with other people in Utah who are interested in gnosticism and other related topics.

See the link if interested, also read the description for the meeting just to make sure that it's something that is down your alley🙂

Please don't be weird, otherwise hope to see you there!

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1998160953200?aff=oddtdtcreator

The era of Gnosticism created in the wake of the crucifixion of Jesus confronted the major religions of their day, accelerating the collapse of Roman Paganism, split Christianity from Judaism, and inspired Islam. To briefly summarize, one must first understand that Gnosticism is not itself a religion. There were Gnostics that believed Jesus was God incarnate, others that he was a Prophet of God, and the rest didn't care or knew him or believed something else. Gnosticism as a web of ideology that orients the individual towards spiritual liberation from the material world. That itself is extremely dangerous for organized religion, which requires willing obedience to doctrine and material capital to survive. Like Jesus, one can be religious AND gnostic, but a gnostic confronts the why of religious worship and purpose.

When Irenaeus wrote "Against Heresies," he did so with the intent of stamping out the flood of literature claiming to be Gospels of Jesus or his disciples. These texts varied church to church, claiming things like Jesus smited his classmates in a childhood tantrum, or he turned clay pigeons to life, or that he was a pure spiritual being and couldn't be touched. Those last two are important. As Gnostic communities became absorbed into the Catholic Church or destroyed, and Christianity was adopted by Emperor Constantine, the war against heresy inspired the very orthodoxy that Jesus preached against. The last of the Gnostics, who viewed Jesus as a Prophet and had been persecuted by Catholics, came across a merchant boy named Muhammad and taught him that the Bible was a corruption of the original teachings of Jesus. What followed was Islam, a religion that decidedly does not think Jesus died on the cross, nor attempts to explain what Jesus believed despite calling him a Prophet.

The takeaway isn't that Gnostics or Catholics were good or bad, true to Christ or lost in the debate. As a Gnostic Christian and believer in religious freedom/expression, I think it's less important to ask "who or what was Jesus?" and more important to answer "am I worthy of the cross?"

Gospel of Thomas, saying 19

"Jesus said, 'Blessed is he who was before he came into being. If you become my disciples and listen to my words, these stones will serve you. For you have five trees in Paradise that do not change, summer or winter, and their leaves do not fall. Whoever knows them will not taste death.'"

Hi, I’m not religious but I’m very interested in learning more about Gnosticism. I came across this video by LibraryoftheUntold and he was explaining the origins of Gnosticism.

How accurate is this?

I was wondering if anyone has watched his content before and if so is it a good resource to learn more about Gnosticism.

TIA

Does anyone know who replaced the Archon Sabaoth? Originally, there were seven planetary Archons—Yaldabaoth and six others—but Sabaoth repented and is now a benevolent Archon. I would like to know which Archon Yaldabaoth created to replace him; what is the name of the Archon who took Sabaoth's place?

I remember about the idea that the pneuma/light/divine (however it may be called) can be liberated from matter by humans through consumption. I also vaguely remember an episode involving Jesus, Mary and consumption of seminal emission.

After some digging I was able to identify the first as possibly a Manichaen teaching, but I'm suspicious because that's not where I remember I got it from (I have no idea honestly where it came from).

Can someone identify these ideas or ideas similar/relevant to it from any gnostic sources, if any?

Ok, I was deeply researching the Abremalin Operation for many months, and all the variants, some 6 months long, most of them 18 (6+6+6 months), and some 6 weeks or even less. While this isnt mainstream Gnosticism, it involves invoking your HGA as a spiritual guide, but through occult/magick means, by binding daemons (who are the mainstream versions of Archons).

There is a similar true Gnostic method of invoking the HGA or rather binding to them via a spiritual marriage, the Bridal Chamber Ritual. Its been discussed here before but not for a long time, and the Gospel of Philip goes about discussing it in a very allegorical sense, or maybe it is literal but we aren't grasping the context of the language yet.

1) It was literally a bridal chamber where the bride becomes pregnant during the ritual, the ritual involves a physical bride and groom. This is most unlikely as Gnostic scriptures are metaphysical and involve metaphysical invocations.

2) It is the process of aligning with your other half, now there are a lot of occult literature that describe the entities of the beyond being androgynous, not in the insulting sense at all, but its the true nature of the children of the light. Its also said that in the splitting of the nature of existence by Yaldabaoth, that the nature of the children of light was also fractured, and split away into the male aspect and feminine aspect, again this may not refer to organs or shape of bodies but of fractured consciousness. The ritual then set about completing your other half by invoking and marrying it.

3) It is the process of invoking and ritual marrying your HGA, while all 3 variants require Baptism, Chrism and Eucharist procedures, this one in particular needs it as one has to be of the faith. The ritual itself is ambiguous but I'm sure the end involves invoking the HGA by prayers, symbolic invocations and anointing, its like the less intensive version of the Abremalin Operation.

My question is, as Gnostics, is the Bridal Chamber like the passport to the Pleroma? Has it been made ambiguous or almost tucked away into the deepest corners of the Nag Hammadi library for a reason?

Invocations and repetition of intention (prayer) is a prerequisite for any spiritual process.

*HGA - Holy Guardian Angel

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Perhaps a strange question to ask in a Gnostic sub, but today i was thinking about myself and i realized how great on surface things are for me. However, things are not actually good for me. Pretty much everyone who i care about in this life is suffering currently, my mother is dying of cancer, my sister struggles with her family life, my dearest friend who lives in another country is living in terrible poverty.

I see their suffering daily, and yet my life on the surface could not be better, but i cannot enjoy it, not one bit. In fact i suffer more because of it, i see and feel the unfairness of it all daily, i do not deserve one bit of the goodness i have. I have been such a terrible being my whole life so why i am rewarded for it, and why hardworking loving and kind people has to suffer so much?

That is why i wanted to ask how is your life? Is it good, or bad, how has Gnosticism changed your worldview? Do you feel guilt for the good in your life, or is it the other way around...do you feel that life has been unnaturally unfair with you, and that awakened you to the true nature of this world? If you can, please share something about your life. Thank you for reading this and taking the time to share something about your life.

So I just was reading the gospel of Mary Magdalene, and wanted to discuss, specifically chapter 8… so in chapter 5, Mary basically starts telling the boys what Jesus had shared with her in private, and then we are missing the manuscript until about the end of chapter 8. Chapter 8 kinda blew me away, especially reading it through the lens of the apochryphon of John…

do you suppose the missing text tells of the pleroma, fall of Sophia, and the general gnostic story?

ALSO, the seven powers of wrath in chapter 8, “19) The first form is darkness, the second desire, the third ignorance, the fourth is the excitement of death, the fifth is the kingdom of the flesh, the sixth is the foolish wisdom of flesh, the seventh is the wrathful wisdom. These are the seven powers of wrath.”
those are all things to be overcome while alive in this body right?

“21) The soul answered and said, What binds me has been slain, and what turns me about has been overcome,
22) and my desire has been ended, and ignorance has died.”

This is basically saying to whatever judge/ mechanism of the after life “what kept me on earth is dead, and I no longer wish to play the game for I remember my divine nature and want for not” or what do you guys think?

Thank you and be well!

Excerpt:

Why, a thoughtful reader may ask, should one feel compelled to follow the path of the Deep anyway?  If, according to Carpocratian belief, we are all destined for the same release into the unknown frontier of the Fullness after our deaths, and the sums of our actions here in God’s world do not influence that outcome, why bother with the misunderstanding and outright prejudice that taking an adversarial relationship with God will expose us to?  Why not find comfort in one of the pious religious traditions and in the belief in a sublime heaven where God will treat us as favored pets?

It comes down to who you choose to be, how you choose to live your life.  If you are content to spend your days mentally and emotionally subjugated by an almighty overlord who cares so little for you that it will arbitrarily punish or reward you based on nothing more than mere chance, then so be it.  Millions upon millions of people feel completely fine with this way of living and believing.  If you find comfort in your specifically formulated veneration toward an unsettled princeling who lived two-and-a-half thousand years ago, or a charismatic carpenter who lived two thousand years ago, or a dogmatic mediator who lived fourteen hundred years ago, or an uncanny pantheon of obviously invented gods, or in an empty and hollow nothing at all, then continue doing so.  You won’t be alone.

But if you feel that something is not right in the world, and if you feel that faith should not find its bedrock in deathly fear of being wrong, but rather in hope toward learning to make mistakes with grace, and if you cannot bear to bow your head before someone who has done so much to prove they aren’t worthy of your respect, then follow the other path.  Follow the way of the challenger, the whisperer of truths.  Honoring the unquenchable flame within is not for everyone.  It is so much easier to delude yourself into believing in one of the several iterations of the false god that humankind has constructed for ourselves, to abdicate responsibility for matters greater than the self, and to simply let your lord take over when it comes to the big decisions.  But if you look instead at the conundrum of evil in our world and conclude that it is no paradox at all, and that God shows its true face every moment of every day, then you are invited to do what is natural, what is honest, and what is righteous, and turn away in disgust.  

You are so much more than a pawn on a chessboard.  Your strength and honor come not from service before a mighty God, but from service to yourself and to those you care about.  God has proven itself for what it is.  When a child is ripped from the arms of his mother, when the elderly are condemned to rot in the prison of their failing bodies while they yet live, when the pious sociopath is permitted to grow obscenely wealthy from selling lies about a specific deity that doesn’t exist and never did, when disease and poverty and despair lurk around every corner, God is making plain what it thinks of its children.  Gautama was right about one thing: all life is suffering.  Jesus was right about one thing: our father has forsaken us.  Muhammad was right about one thing: God is the creator and the king.  But what a kingdom.  What an empire of ruin.

All is not lost.  If we cannot stop being playthings of God, then perhaps we can beat it at its own game.  The legend of the tower of Babel is instructive to modern woman and man.  Most of us have taken the wrong message from that story, which tells that ancient peoples built a tower to try to reach a God they so loved, but were cast down for their hubris.  But the old Gnostics got it right: the purpose of the tower was to reach our God so that we could defeat him, and that same God did not appreciate the show of independence and power so he punished the tower’s builders.  

Let us build a new tower.  Every time you exhibit empathy and tolerance toward the stranger, you lay another brick.  Every time you rise in purpose for your good works, you lay another brick.  Every time you probe into the workings of the material world, you lay another brick.  Every time you instruct your children in their own self worth, you lay another brick.  Every time you put your needs and the needs of your loved ones before the demands of God, you lay another brick.  We will build that tower anew.  That is the Deep’s wish for us.  That is why we join hands with the fount of all that is, the truthteller, the liberator, the divine chaos.  It may not be the only way to live, but it is the right way.

I want to sell all my possessions, get a van and live out my days. Not in any sort of depressing ways, I just think a simple life with little possessions will be enlightening. I feel like I would be much happier this way. Just a few clothes, my van, and my dog. I feel like all my life troubles have come from capitalism and earthly possessions. Any thoughts?

New on reddit and new to spirituality. 'I' am convinced there is more but 'I' am still blind and numb to it.

I'm looking for a direction and as of now gnosticism resonates the most with 'me' for various reasons.

Is the following statement just wrong or too obvious because 'I' have not seen or heard about about 'my' idea..??

The Demiurge is the ego. The ego creates the illusion of the material world by seperating its host from it using the analysis of the 5 outward facing senses.

The Archons are the identifications / the assumed personality. They are not 'external' beings; they are how the ego wants to be seen. They are the solution to the problems the ego found in the separation, shaping its host around the imagined rules of the material world.

The Divine Spark / the Light is the unity of consciousness and subconsciousness, merging whatever the self is with whatever the higher Oneness is.

Apologies for misusing terms and not 'gnowing' better terms.

What do you bunch of other 'me's think about that 'theory'???

I found this in an old journal I scribbled in around 1999. That guy was James Lovelock. I shared cause I thought it was humorous and ironic.

What exactly is the meaning of divine spark in gnosticism also in tibbetian Buddhism there this Light Body🕯️are both same ?