A Modern Gnostic Chrestomathy/Best Of Summer Harvest
February 12, 2008 at 3:34 pm
The following links and articles are a collected “Best Of” from all previous incarnations of this site. For more information, or to contact Bro. Puma, please visit the Gnostic Order of Allogenes homepage.
It’s Axiomatic!: “Gnosis is the knowledge that people are generally– not always, but generally– good; that money is always– ALWAYS– a tool of the Archons; that beauty can be found in suprising places; that Wisdom speaks to us at all times, every day; that you really, truly don’t have to do what you don’t want to do; that every single person– including the one you despise– is helping teach the universe about itself. GnosticISM is putting all of this into practice and doing it again and again and again.”
Six Criticisms of the Gnostic Renascance: “Let’s turn the Panopticon inside-out for a moment, and instead of looking out in all directions, allow all directions to view us simultaneously. There are certain qualities displayed by many modern Gnostics and Gnostic organizations that reflect incredibly poorly on all of us. I include myself and the organizations with which I am involved in these critiques.”
A Gnostic Ideography: “1. An extremely dense, Smoke-colored, Shining Stone.”
Meditations on Death: “In general, anyone who claims definitive knowledge of what happens after death is deluded or lying. The following are my delusions and lies.”
Thoughts on Gnosis: “We Gnostics love tallking about just what this ‘gnosis‘ thing consists of, mainly because if you have it, you can’t describe it, nor will you typically admit it, and if you’re trying to figure out what it is, you’re likely wrong. On occasion it’s good to take what you originally thought about gnosis out of your back of tricks and see if it still sticks to the wall.”
On the Worship of the Demiurge: “The idea that people who are not Gnostic are “worshipping the demiurge” is a huge misinterpretation of what is a very nuanced position.”
Reclaiming 2012 and the Problem With Saving the World: “Now here’s the thing: I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he’s actually right. Maybe all the 2012-heads who follow Daniel Pinchbeck and his ilk are doing us all a huge favor by sounding the end-times klaxon. Who am I to say? If so, I expect that Pinchbeck would be able to do one of a few things, any one of which will convince me that he’s right on.”
Running Towards the Bomb: Gnosticism and the End of Civilisation: “Back on Fantastic Planet, I often wrote about the End of Civilisation in terms of Gnostic mythology (and vice-versa). Although many of my opinions on the subject have changed, I still think there’s some merit to these essays. I especially think it’s valuable to think about the intersection of spirituality and history– in other words, how does what we consider the ’spiritual’ realm effect what we consider our collective interaction with space and time? How does the Pleroma behave within the World of Forms?”
The Ego: Self HypGnosis: “The Gnostic presentation of the Ego or Self seems to provide a kind of happy medium between individuation and union with the Pleroma, or fuillness. As I mentioned, the complete elimination of the ego is not something found in Gnostic thought– at least, not something one attains while trapped in the World of Forms. And, I also think that the Gnostic would indeed find the complete elimination of the Ego counterproductive.”
You Are A Zoo: More Gnostic Archonic Hijinx: “Lest we think, however, that the Gnostics understood all of this as mere metaphor, we should acknowledge that there is absolutely an element of literal, physical meaning in this practice. Indeed, the Archons are located on the body in a way that suggests a kind of “channel” for what I hesitate to call energy because of its newage connotations, but what SJn describes as the ‘activating power,’ owned by its own set of Archons.”
Fat Man: The “Triumph” of the Archons: “August 9th is a dirty day. Today we lamentfully commemorate the massacre of hundreds of thousands of living individuals simultaneously. On this day in 1945, Servants of the Archons dropped an atomic bomb named “Fat Man” from an aircraft onto an unsuspecting city full of people.”
Chaos Theory and Gnostic Myth: “The basic mathematical system used in Chaos Theory, fractal mathematics, describes the universe as a fractal, a whole– or Entirety, if you will– in which each part is similar to/resembles the completed Whole. As above, So below. One of the things I love the most about fractal mathematics, is how neatly it works as a metaphor for the Gnostic creation myth.”
The Temple and The Bridal Chamber: “God never really asked for a Temple to be built in his name. Really, it’s right there in 2 Samuel 7. King David (a real jerk, by the bye) has a palace built of cedar for himself (which was a pretty huge deal: a King in a Palace in a City– what a change from a tent and rule by Judges!), and gets it in his mind that God needs a house, too. Essentially, he wants to “civilize” God bgy constructing a Temple. God isn’t terribly amused….”
Get Your Stinkin’ Paws Off My Religion, You Damn Dirty Apes!: “You can have Love of God and Neighbor without Jesus Christ or the Bible. To have Christianity, however, you need all of these things. You can have Knowledge of God and Self without Valentinus or the Nag Hammadi Library. To have Gnosticism, however, you need all of these things.”
Shining Traces (for Gnostics): “The world is imperfect, flawed,
And sometimes treacherous.
This doesn’t give us an excuse
To treat other people badly.
We’re all stuck here.
So, above all, be kind.”
Nietzsche was Not a Gnostic (and Neither is Hillary Clinton): “Nietzsche was Not a Gnostic. Not only is he missing the “G,” he simply wasn’t. Strangely, this thought didn’t emerge unbidden from the rhetorical void. As a matter of fact, a number of individuals have, of late, been trumpeting the argument that crazy old Friederich was, in fact, a Gnostic, and therefore should be included among the unofficial “canon” of nominal Gnostic saints alongside such inarguable Gnostic brilliants as Carl Jung, William Blake and Philip Dick.”
Gnosticism in Balance: Of Babies and Bathwater: “The point is, we’re all aware by now that most monotheistic (and a few poly-) religions to this point have been overly patriarchal, emphasizing the “male” role over that of the “female.” This resulted in a backlash of spiritual gender-cleansing among some traditions (I’m lookin’ at you, Dianic Wiccans)– an overarching emphasis on the feminine to often ridiculous ends (a “feminist” I Ching that simply substitutes “woman” for “man” each time it occurs?!?). I sometimes wonder if certain forms of Gnosticism are heading in this direction.”
The Fear Series: “On the other hand, some spiritual paths value fear to such an extent that they focus upon the experience of the fear of God(s) as a necessary component in religious experience. Hellfire and Damnation, Human sacrifice, Greek worship of Pan (”panic!”), Mystical FEAR as a complement to Mystical Love– why the dichotomy? Does it actually exist? What, exactly, is this fear thing, and where did it come from? Is there spiritual value in being afraid of the God?”
The Gnostic Feminine: It’s pretty common knowledge by now that the Gnostics held the feminine aspect of the God in extremely high regard. I don’t want to go into the differences between Canonical Christianity (which, in many cases, does actually acknowledge a feminine aspect of the God, though they don’t like to talk about it); suffice to say that within Gnosticism the Divine Feminine had equal footing theoretically *and* mythologically, and, in modern Ecclesiastical Gnosticism, liturgically.
THE PREMISELESS IMPERATIVE: Activities for the Troubled Prisoner
Intro: Jump Back, Break It Down! |
Part I: If You Want To be Saved, First Admit You Are A Sinner |
Part II: Achtung, Baby! |
Part III: Shooting for the Existential Buzz |
Part IV: The Perfect Home In Just An Hour |
Part V: Scattered Brains Are Better Brains |
Part VI: In the Beginning Was the Question
GNOSTIC FOLK STORIES– Reimaginings of selected Gnostic texts
All About Being Born Again: “Some people, Rheginos, seem to want to learn all about everything. Anyhow, this is what they say they want when they’re busy with questions that are really hard to answer.”
The Archons Are Real!: “Because the Archons are real, the Apostle Paul– talking about “the Rulers of Darkness”– told us that “our struggle isn’t against flesh and blood, but the Rulers of the Universe and the Spirits of Wickedness.” I sent this to you because you asked whether the Archons are really “real.””
The Pearl Salesman and the Soul Doctors: “As soon as the Lord gave us a mind to, we headed down to the docks. We found a ship about to sail and asked the sailors about signing on as passengers. The sailors were all really nice to us, thank God. We sailed for about a day and a night, and then a mysterious wind came up behind us and blew us out to a small city in the middle of the sea.”
Here’s What Happened to Brother Jacob: ‘From Jacob: Peace, love, grace, faith and life from Blessed Life! When you asked me to write to you about what the Teacher told me and Simon Peter, I couldn’t say no, but I also couldn’t give you this information directly. So, I wrote it in our language and I’m sending it “for your eyes only.” Since you’re a minister in our church and for our saints, and since the Teacher didn’t tell these things to all twelve of his disciples, be careful about who you tell this to. Anybody you do share this with, though, is very lucky if they believe it.”
The Hidden Gospel of the Gnosis of the Great Invisible Spirit: “As I sat looking inwardly, withdrawn into the Silence of my inner vitality, I felt the sensation of the body fall away from myself, as though my consciousness was ascending through the spheres upwards and beyond, even into the regions of Light past the Eighth and the Ninth, wherein a great presence radiated through me and spoke to me.”
