Hi Rebel18,
I didn't make that statement about Gnositsm beingwritten by Magicians. Look back in the forum and you'll see that Ixthis made that comment to me .
Shanagirl
JoinedPosts by Shanagirl
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69
How big is a demon?
by Terry inthings which exist are real enough.
we can measure them.
they are just this big and no bigger or smaller.. they are here and not there.. imaginary things have the luxury of being any size.
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328
Jesus Is Jehovah/Jehovah Is Jesus
by snowbird inhttp://www.str.org/site/news2?page=newsarticle&id=5725.
i fought against this with all my wts-trained power, but truth prevailed.. any way you cut it, it comes out the same.. peace and strength in your search.. sylvia.
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Shanagirl
HI Snowbird,
I am new here. I believe Jesus is the exact opposite and does not have anything to do with the creator god of the Hebrew Scriptures. That god is the "blind god" who is known as Yaldabaoth in older stories from pre Bible times. He is spoken about in the Apocryphal book of John, were Jesus identifies him. Jesus emmianted from the True God of Light who begot him thru his forethought. Jesus refers to the True God as Light, Love, ineffable, unnameable, the All. Yaldabaoth identifies himself as I Am the only God, there are no other Gods but me" I am a jealous God.......... This false creator being is the creator of corruptible matter and is the god of the OT who ordered blood sacrifices and mass murders of men women and child virgins. He scared the Israelites into exlusive worship of him and the Christ who came and is mentioned in the New Testament, has never endorsed this Jehovah , Yaweh Yaldabaoth god as his Father. I believe the Gnositc Christian teachings about this, and I think the ancient Paulinian Christian Fathers kept this information out of the New Testament Scriptures. Jesus is the the one in the beginning with the Word of God, and the only begotten emmination of the Father who is speaks the words of the True God, not the Jehovah gods (Elohim). Anyway, so this is what I get from those teachings
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31
You-Tube Deprogramming JW's -Interview w/ 2 Elders About Child Abuse
by flipper in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anmrufrgtky&feature=related.
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Shanagirl
pompous assholes
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8
Gospel of Thomas?
by Chariklo ini have a question, not really directly related to jw's but maybe something will come from a discussion, sonce gnosticism and non-canonical texts have been discussed recently.. through my mind today has been running the text "cleave the wood and i am there.
" it was first sent me nearly thirty years ago on a card, by a nun.
i didn't know where it came from, but soon afterwards i heard of the gospel of thomas and somehow thought it came from there...maybe i read it, don't remember.. anyway, this evening, not knowing why this particular text should be in my mind i decided to do a bit of online research.
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Shanagirl
The Gnostic Christians' books are below in the Nag Hammadi Library alphapbietical indelx
Click here: Nag Hammadi Library Alphabetical Index It has been shown that the Gnostics identified this imperfect demiurg-“god” with the god of the Old Testament, who they also called Yaldabaoth, who wants to keep humans in a state of ignorance in a material world and who punishes their attempts to achieve knowledge and insight (to “eat from the tree of knowledge”.
The demiurg is a lesser god who wants to be the only one.The text The Apokryphon of John (or The Secret Book of John) states:
“He is impious in his madness, she who dwells in him. For he said, ‘I am God and no other god exists except me’, since he is ignorant of the place from which his strength had come” .
(Cf. Ex 20:23 and Deut 5:7)
Could this be the explanation of all the abominable cruelties, which after all are literally described in the Old Testament? -
8
Gospel of Thomas?
by Chariklo ini have a question, not really directly related to jw's but maybe something will come from a discussion, sonce gnosticism and non-canonical texts have been discussed recently.. through my mind today has been running the text "cleave the wood and i am there.
" it was first sent me nearly thirty years ago on a card, by a nun.
i didn't know where it came from, but soon afterwards i heard of the gospel of thomas and somehow thought it came from there...maybe i read it, don't remember.. anyway, this evening, not knowing why this particular text should be in my mind i decided to do a bit of online research.
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Shanagirl
In the early Christianity there were two mainstreams: the Paulinian and the Gnostic Christians. Saul had pursued Christians until he converted and became Paul. The year of his conversion is estimated to be between 33 and 35. The Paulinian Christianity began to develop only after that. Who were the Christians that Paul pursued? They will especially have been the so called Christian Jews. This concept refers to groups among the earliest Christianity, to which belonged Jews who still adhered to Jewish customs - like Jesus and his disciples themselves (because they had to assimilate with the local culture after all, despite their divergent beliefs).
Out of these Christian Jews arose the movement of the Gnostic Christians. Because of his views, Paul came into a conflict with this original Christianity.
Hence the Paulinian Christianity didn’t arise out of the original Christianity, and with Paul, who hadn’t known Jesus himself, an obviously modified Christianity began, that distanced itself from the Christianity close to Jesus that was in the beginning. For the Gnostics, the creator of this world wasn’t the true prime creator, but a demiurg, a “craftsman”, a fallen angel, who also has an evil side.
While the real God, the true prime creator (who Jesus calls “father”) is unrestrictedly good, an imperfect demiurg created an imperfect world. -
8
Gospel of Thomas?
by Chariklo ini have a question, not really directly related to jw's but maybe something will come from a discussion, sonce gnosticism and non-canonical texts have been discussed recently.. through my mind today has been running the text "cleave the wood and i am there.
" it was first sent me nearly thirty years ago on a card, by a nun.
i didn't know where it came from, but soon afterwards i heard of the gospel of thomas and somehow thought it came from there...maybe i read it, don't remember.. anyway, this evening, not knowing why this particular text should be in my mind i decided to do a bit of online research.
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Shanagirl
Introduction
There is a growing consensus among scholars that the Gospel of Thomas – discovered over a half century ago in the Egyptian desert – dates to the very beginnings of the Christian era and may well have taken first form before any of the four traditional canonical Gospels. During the first few decades after its discovery several voices representing established orthodox biases argued that the Gospel of Thomas (abbreviated, GTh) was a late-second or third century Gnostic forgery. Scholars currently involved in Thomas studies now largely reject that view, though such arguments will still be heard from orthodox apologists and are encountered in some of the earlier publications about Thomas.
Today most students would agree that the Thomas Gospel has opened a new perspective on the first voice of the Christian tradition. Recent studies centered on GTh have led to a stark reappraisal of the forces and events forming "orthodoxy" during the second and third centuries. But more importantly, the Gospel of Thomas is awakening interest in a forgotten spiritual legacy of Christian culture. The incipit (or "beginning words") of Thomas invite each of us "who has ears to hear" to join in a unique quest:
These are the hidden words that the living Jesus spoke,
and that Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down. And He said:
"Whoever finds the meaning of these words will not taste death."The Gospel of Thomas Collection -- The Gnostic Society Library Click here: Nag Hammadi Library Alphabetical Index
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69
How big is a demon?
by Terry inthings which exist are real enough.
we can measure them.
they are just this big and no bigger or smaller.. they are here and not there.. imaginary things have the luxury of being any size.
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Shanagirl
ixthism, I do get what you are saying when you mention
I would say that the demon of heresy and confusion is the nastiest since he robs people from the true Way and Life.
Heresy is the label gives to heretics, just as apostasy is the label Watchtower gives to JW's as apostates. The imporant thing to me is to choose sprirituality that is not religiosity or organized dogma that persecutes others who choose to worship differently. I choose to embrace the following concepts from Christian Gnostism. I think it enriches the Gospels in Christ's teachings in apochrypal book of John. The message is comforting to me in many ways, after being in such an authoritarian judgemental, punishing religion of Watchtower. I also have read about the Watchers and rebellious angels in pre flood time. I found this very facinating and supplements the Genenis account of the Flood.
The bottom line about the
New Testament is that it consists of demonstrably errant
and fallible books chosen and canonized by a corrupt
Catholic Church. It was the Roman Catholic Church that selected
and canonized the books of the New Testament. It was not
God Most High who did so.
All ancient New Testament manuscripts, of whatever
text-type, in whatever language, from whatever location,
whether fragmentary or full, were copied and passed
down by Catholic scribes--whether Roman or Byzantine--
or some other branch of the Catholic Church. Choose
whatever ancient manuscripts you like; they arrived via a
corrupt Catholic Church, with it's official seal of approval.
Like it or not, mainstream Christian, you are using the
Catholic New Testament. Even the titles given to the four
"canonical" gospels are simply a tradition of the Catholic
Church. Those four gospels were originally anonymous,
and the current names they bear were an afterthought
tacked on by the Catholic Church to give these four
works a boost over their competition in the battle for
universal acceptance. Irenaeus also stresses the unity of the Old Testament and the Gospel. In the final volume, Book V, Irenaeus focuses on more sayings of Jesus plus the letters of Paul the ApostleThe purpose of "Against Heresies" was to refute the teachings of various Gnostic groups; apparently, several Greek merchants had begun an oratorial campaign in Irenaeus' bishopric, teaching that the material world was the accidental creation of an evil god, from which we are to escape by the pursuit of gnosis. Irenaeus argued that the true gnosis is in fact knowledge of Christ, which redeems rather than escapes from bodily existence. Until the discovery of the Library of Nag Hammadi in 1945, Against Heresies was the best-surviving description of Gnosticism. According to some biblical scholars, the findings at Nag Hammadi have shown Irenaeus' description of Gnosticism to be largely inaccurate and polemic in nature Though correct in some details about the belief systems of various groups, Irenaeus' main purpose was to warn Christians against Gnosticism, rather than accurately describe those beliefs.
The Catholic Church, by accepting the Hebrew Bible in its
literal interpretation, and by not including the fact that
the gods the Jews worshipped were satanic beings, continued
to mislead the general public by promoting the tribal god
Jehovah – Yahweh Ildabaoth the Demiurge as the Supreme
Being.
The Church then set about establishing a political and
religious empire based upon Old Israel’s model for living
and blended Yahweh Ildabaoth the Demiurge in with the
teachings of god Mithra etc. Emperor Constantine and his
coherts in Rome worshipped many evil gods, which they
blended together as one god in the Orthodox Jewish and Roman
Catholic Canon. Only the Christian Gnostics stood in their
way. It was the Gnostic Christians who taught the teachings
of Jesus (Yashua) and tried to preserve the writings written
by his followers. These heroic people were deemed ENEMIES
OF THE STATE OF ROME AND THE NEW JEWISH AND ROMAN ORTHODOX
RELIGION. The Gnostics quickly found themselves viciously
denounced as heretics and their sacred books were banned
burnt by Roman autoriites. Thanks to the miraculous
discovery of several Gnostic scriptures at Nag Hammadi in
Egypt, just fifty years ago, we can gain a better insight
into the Gnostic Christian communities of the
early centuries AD.
In Gnostic work uncovered at Nag Hammadi called The
Apocalypse of Adam, which is an enlightening account of the
creation story of Adam and Eve that dates back from the
first century, we find an account of a statement allegedly
made by Adam. In this account he states that his creator
was an evil god and that the original creation of man did
not occur by these evil agents but by highly enlightened
beings known the “Watchers” who took direct orders from
OUR HEAVENLY FATHER who is the eternal GOD and Jesus Yashua
long before he incarnated in his physical body. Adam claims
that mankind resembles the beautiful “Watchers” and not
the “Fallen Watchers” who we call the Nordic Aryan Alien
“Fallen Watchers” today.
WATCHERS VS FALLEN WATCHERSClick here: The Book of Enoch: The First Parable: Chapter XL
The original “Watchers” were good entities. They are
what we would call “Guardian Angels” today. They were
the creators of our three dimensional world and of THE
ORIGINAL HUMAN BEING ON EARTH, and took direct orders from
Jesus (Yashua) long before he incarnated in human flesh. A
group of these “Watchers” fell and became known as the
“Fallen Watchers” who came to follow an evil entity
known as Satan.
These evil gods were known as the “Shining Ones” and
are the same beings the New Age call “Light Beings”
today. The Elohim would appear as agents of god El and were
given the title of angels in the Old Testament. The word
angel is a more recent version of the original word, which
meant AGENT OF A GOD OR THE GODS. -
69
How big is a demon?
by Terry inthings which exist are real enough.
we can measure them.
they are just this big and no bigger or smaller.. they are here and not there.. imaginary things have the luxury of being any size.
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Shanagirl
ixthis,
The Gnostic Christians of the early centuries AD, who
preserved the original teachings of Jesus, distinguished
between the TRUE Heavenly Father and the gods in the Hebrew
Bible. Jehovah (YHWH) was NOT the HEAVENLY FATHER revealed
by Jesus. While the Jewish Bible revealed a tribal god, the
God of Jesus was the universal Supreme Being of all
humanity.The Hebrew god was a god of fear, while Jesus’ Heavenly
Father was a God of love. In fact, Jesus never referred to
the Heavenly Father as Jehovah aka Yahweh Ildabaoth the
Demiurge. In the Gospels of the New Testament Jesus NEVER referred to Jehovah.In the New Testament Gospels Jesus refers to the Heavenly Father, God of Love
The Gnostic Gospel of Peter states that the
Hebrews were under the delusion that they knew the Heavenly
Father, but DID NOT. They were ignorant of him, and knew
only a false god, an impostor, whose true nature was unknown
to them.The Gnostics exposed Jehovah aka Yahweh Ildabaoth the
Demiurge and the creator god Yaldabaoth the Demiurge as the
creative power of our current earths re-creation from the
chaotic mess it had been left in after the last global
cataclysm. One of the Gnostic teachers told how the unknown
Father made the angels, archangels, powers and dominions.
The world we currently live in and everything in it, was
REMADE by seven particular angels. These angels he described
as rebellious feeble artisans. (See the list below)In the Gnostic Aprocraphon Book of John
Click here: The Secret Book of John (Apocryphon of John) Jesus speaks with the apostle John about the Supreme Being in the beginning and how all creation eminatef from his forethought, and how Yaldabaoth first came into existance along with the chaos that was brought about and the . I believe this false god is the god of the three major religious groups in chaotic struggle today on earth causing the evils and bloodshed presently. This Jehovah Yahweh god has brought this to humanity today just like he did in the Old Testament sufferings of the Hebrew worshippers. Islam, Judaism and Christianity are all vicitms of this chaotic bloodthirsty god of jealousy and war. If that is not how big a demon is than what is?
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69
How big is a demon?
by Terry inthings which exist are real enough.
we can measure them.
they are just this big and no bigger or smaller.. they are here and not there.. imaginary things have the luxury of being any size.
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Shanagirl
ixthis, I understand the roll the Church has played in keeping Gnostic Christian writings out of the Bible.
Click here: The Secret Book of John (Apocryphon of John)
What is Gnosticism? Nag Hammadi Library Alphabetical Index
In the first century of the Christian era the term “Gnostic” came to denote a heterodox segment of the diverse new Christian community. Among early followers of Christ it appears there were groups who delineated themselves from the greater household of the Church by claiming not simply a belief in Christ and his message, but a "special witness" or revelatory experience of the divine. It was this experience or gnosis that set the true follower of Christ apart, so they asserted. Stephan Hoeller explains that these Christians held a "conviction that direct, personal and absolute knowledge of the authentic truths of existence is accessible to human beings, and, moreover, that the attainment of such knowledge must always constitute the supreme achievement of human life."2
What the "authentic truths of existence" affirmed by the Gnostics were will be briefly reviewed below, but first a historical overview of the early Church might be useful. In the initial century and a half of Christianity -- the period when we find first mention of "Gnostic" Christians -- no single acceptable format of Christian thought had yet been defined. During this formative period Gnosticism was one of many currents moving within the deep waters of the new religion. The ultimate course Christianity, and Western culture with it, would take was undecided at this early moment. Gnosticism was one of the seminal influences shaping that destiny.
That Gnosticism was, at least briefly, in the mainstream of Christianity is witnessed by the fact that one of its most influential teachers, Valentinus, may have been in consideration during the mid-second century for election as the Bishop of Rome.3 Born in Alexandria around 100 C.E., Valentinus distinguished himself at an early age as an extraordinary teacher and leader in the highly educated and diverse Alexandrian Christian community. In mid-life he migrated from Alexandria to the Church's evolving capital, Rome, where he played an active role in the public affairs of the Church. A prime characteristic of Gnostics was their claim to be keepers of sacred traditions, gospels, rituals, and successions – esoteric matters for which many Christians were either not properly prepared or simply not inclined. Valentinus, true to this Gnostic predilection, apparently professed to have received a special apostolic sanction through Theudas, a disciple and initiate of the Apostle Paul, and to be a custodian of doctrines and rituals neglected by what would become Christian orthodoxy.4 Though an influential member of the Roman church in the mid-second century, by the end of his life Valentinus had been forced from the public eye and branded a heretic by the developing orthodoxy Church.
While the historical and theological details are far too complex for proper explication here, the tide of history can be said to have turned against Gnosticism in the middle of the second century. No Gnostic after Valentinus would ever come so near prominence in the greater Church. Gnosticism's emphasis on personal experience, its continuing revelations and production of new scripture, its asceticism and paradoxically contrasting libertine postures, were all met with increasing suspicion. By 180 C.E. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, was publishing his first attacks on Gnosticism as heresy, a labor that would be continued with increasing vehemence by the church Fathers throughout the next century.
Orthodoxy Christianity was deeply and profoundly influenced by its struggles with Gnosticism in the second and third centuries. Formulations of many central traditions in Christian theology came as reflections and shadows of this confrontation with the Gnosis.5 But by the end of the fourth century the struggle was essentially over: the evolving ecclesia had added the force of political correctness to dogmatic denunciation, and with this sword so-called "heresy" was painfully cut from the Christian body. Gnosticism as a Christian tradition was largely eradicated, its remaining teachers ostracized, and its sacred books destroyed. All that remained for students seeking to understand Gnosticism in later centuries were the denunciations and fragments preserved in the patristic heresiologies. Or at least so it seemed until the mid-twentieth century.
Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library
It was on a December day in the year of 1945, near the town of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, that the course of Gnostic studies was radically renewed and forever changed. An Arab peasant, digging around a boulder in search of fertilizer for his fields, happened upon an old, rather large red earthenware jar. Hoping to have found a buried treasure, and with due hesitation and apprehension about the jinn who might attend such a hoard, he smashed the jar open. Inside he discovered no treasure and no genie, but instead books: more than a dozen old codices bound in golden brown leather.6 Little did he realize that he had found an extraordinary collection of ancient texts, manuscripts hidden a millennium and a half before -- probably by monks from the nearby monastery of St. Pachomius seeking to preserve them from a destruction ordered by the church as part of its violent expunging of heterodoxy and heresy.
How the Nag Hammadi manuscripts eventually passed into scholarly hands is a fascinating story too lengthy to relate here. But today, now over fifty years since being unearthed and more than two decades after final translation and publication in English as The Nag Hammadi Library, 7 their importance has become astoundingly clear: These thirteen papyrus codices containing fifty-two sacred texts are representatives of the long lost "Gnostic Gospels", a last extant testament of what orthodox Christianity perceived to be its most dangerous and insidious challenge, the feared opponent that the Church Fathers had reviled under many different names, but most commonly as Gnosticism. The discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts has fundamentally revised our understanding of both Gnosticism and the early Christian church.
Overview of Gnostic Teachings
What was it that these "knowers" knew? What made them such dangerous heretics? The complexities of Gnosticism are legion, making any generalizations wisely suspect. While several systems for defining and categorizing Gnosticism have been proposed over the years, none has gained any general acceptance.8 So with advance warning that this is most certainly not a definitive summary of Gnosticism and its many permutations, we will outline just four elements generally agreed to be characteristic of Gnostic thought.
The first essential characteristic of Gnosticism was introduced above: Gnosticism asserts that "direct, personal and absolute knowledge of the authentic truths of existence is accessible to human beings," and that the attainment of such knowledge is the supreme achievement of human life. Gnosis is not a rational, propositional, logical understanding, but a knowing acquired by experience. The Gnostics were not much interested in dogma or coherent, rational theology -- a fact that makes the study of Gnosticism particularly difficult for individuals with "bookkeeper mentalities. One simply cannot cipher up Gnosticism into syllogistic dogmatic affirmations. The Gnostics cherished the ongoing force of divine revelation--Gnosis was the creative experience of revelation, a rushing progression of understanding, and not a static creed. Carl Gustav Jung, the great Swiss psychologist and a life-long student of Gnosticism in its various historical permutations, affirms,
…We find in Gnosticism what was lacking in the centuries that followed: a belief in the efficacy of individual revelation and individual knowledge. This belief was rooted in the proud feeling of man's affinity with the gods....
In his study, The American Religion, noted literary critic Harold Bloom suggests a second characteristic of Gnosticism that might help us conceptually circumscribe its mysterious heart. Gnosticism, says Bloom, "is a knowing, by and of an uncreated self, or self-within-the self, and [this] knowledge leads to freedom...."9 Primary among all the revelatory perceptions a Gnostic might reach was the profound awakening that came with knowledge that something within him was uncreated. The Gnostics called this "uncreated self" the divine seed, the pearl, the spark of knowing: consciousness, intelligence, light. And this seed of intellect was the self-same substance of God. It was man's authentic reality, the glory of humankind and divinity alike. If woman or man truly came to gnosis of this spark, she understood that she was truly free: Not contingent, not a conception of sin, not a flawed crust of flesh, but the stuff of God, and the conduit of God's immanent realization. There was always a paradoxical cognizance of duality in experiencing this "self-within-a-self". How could it not be paradoxical: By all rational perception, man clearly was not God, and yet in essential truth, was Godly. This conundrum was a Gnostic mystery, and its knowing was their treasure.
The creator god, the one who claimed in evolving orthodox dogma to have made man, and to own him, the god who would have man contingent upon him, born ex nihilo by his will, was a lying demon and not God at all. Gnostics called him by many deprecatory names: "Saklas", the fool; "Ialdebaoth", the blind god; and "Demiurge", the architect or lesser creative force.
Theodotus, a Gnostic teacher writing in Asia Minor between 140 and 160 C.E., explained that the sacred strength of gnosis reveals "who we were, what we have become, where we have been cast out of, where we are bound for, what we have been purified of, what generation and regeneration are."10 "Yet", the eminent scholar of Gnosticism, Elaine Pagels, comments in exegesis, "to know oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to know God: this is the secret of gnosis.... Self-knowledge is knowledge of God; the self and the divine are identical." 11
The Gospel of Thomas, one of the Gnostic texts found preserved in the Nag Hammadi Library, gives these words of the living Jesus:
Jesus said, `I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become drunk from the bubbling stream which I have measured out.... 12
He who will drink from my mouth will become as I am: I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him.' 13
He who will drink from my mouth will become as I am: What a remarkably heretical image! The Gospel of Thomas in its entirety is an extraordinary scripture. Professor Helmut Koester of Harvard University notes that though ultimately this Gospel was condemned and destroyed by the evolving orthodox church, it may be as old or older than the four canonical gospels preserved, and even have served as a source document to them.14
This brings us to the third prominent element in our brief summary of Gnosticism: its reverence for texts and scriptures unaccepted by the orthodox fold. Gnostic experience was mythopoetic: in story and metaphor, and perhaps also in ritual enactments, Gnosticism sought expression of subtle, visionary insights inexpressible by rational proposition or dogmatic affirmation. For the Gnostics, revelation was the nature of Gnosis. Irritated by their profusion of "inspired texts" and myths, Ireneaus complains in his classic second century refutation of Gnosticism, that “…every one of them generates something new, day by day, according to his ability; for no one is deemed perfect, who does not develop...some mighty fiction.”16
The fourth characteristic that we might delineate to understand classical Gnosticism is the most difficult of the four to succinctly untangle, and also one of the most disturbing to subsequent orthodox theology. This is the image of God as a dyad or duality. While affirming the ultimate unity and integrity of the Divine, Gnosticism noted in its experiential encounter with the numinous, contrasting manifestations and qualities.
In many of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts God is imaged as a dyad of masculine and feminine elements. Though their language is specifically Christian, Gnostic sources often use sexual symbolism to describe God. Prof. Pagels explains,
One group of gnostic sources claims to have received a secret tradition from Jesus through James and through Mary Magdalene [who the Gnostics revered as consort to Jesus]. Members of this group prayed to both the divine Father and Mother:
`From Thee, Father, and through Thee, Mother, the two immortal names, Parents of the divine being, and thou, dweller in heaven, humanity, of the mighty name...'17
Several trends within Gnosticism saw in God a union of two disparate natures, a union well imaged with sexual symbolism. Gnostics honored the feminine nature and, in reflection, Elaine Pagels has argued that Christian Gnostic women enjoyed a far greater degree of social and ecclesiastical equality than their orthodox sisters. Jesus himself, taught some Gnostics, had prefigured this mystic relationship: His most beloved disciple had been a woman, Mary Magdalene, his consort. The Gospel of Philip relates,
"...the companion of the Savior is Mary Magdalene. But Christ loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended... They said to him, "Why do you love her more than all of us? the Savior answered and said to them, "Why do I not love you as I love her?"18
The most mysterious and sacred of all Gnostic rituals may have played upon this perception of God as "duality seeking unity." The Gospel of Philip (which in its entirety might be read as a commentary on Gnostic ritual) relates that the Lord established five great sacraments or mysteries: "a baptism and a chrism, and a eucharist, and a redemption, and a bridal chamber."19 Whether this ultimate sacrament of the bridal chamber was a ritual enacted by a man and women, an allegorical term for a mystical experience, or a union of both, we do not know. Only hints are given in Gnostic texts about what this sacrament might be:
Christ came to rectify the separation...and join the two components; and to give life unto those who had died by separation and join them together. Now a woman joins with her husband in the bridal [chamber], and those who have joined in the bridal [chamber] will not reseparate.20
We are left with our poetic imaginations to consider what this might mean. Though Orthodox polemicists frequently accused Gnostics of unorthodox sexual behavior, exactly how these ideas and images played out in human affairs remains historically uncertain.
Classical Christian Gnosticism was lost to the Western world during the fourth and fifth centuries. But the Gnostic world view -- with its comprehension of humankind's true uncreated nature and inherent affinity with God; its affirmation of interior individual experience granting certain knowledge; and its awareness of demiurgic forces binding human consciousness -- was not so easily extinguished. These Gnostic perceptions continued in various forms to course through Western culture though perforce often by occult paths. Gnosticism was and is today a tradition perpetually reborn in the gnosis kardia of humankind, a tradition eternally alive within those “who have ears to hear” its call.
“Gnosis” and “Gnosticism” are still rather arcane terms, though in the last two decades they have been increasingly encountered in the vocabulary of contemporary society. The word Gnosis derives from Greek and connotes "knowledge" or the "act of knowing". On first hearing, it is sometimes confused with another more common term of the same root but opposite sense: agnostic, literally "not knowing”. The Greek language differentiates between rational, propositional knowledge, and a distinct form of knowing obtained by experience or perception. It is this latter knowledge gained from interior comprehension and personal experience that constitutes gnosis.1 -
69
How big is a demon?
by Terry inthings which exist are real enough.
we can measure them.
they are just this big and no bigger or smaller.. they are here and not there.. imaginary things have the luxury of being any size.
-
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Shanagirl
Hi I'm a newbie here. I've been out of the JW's about 10 years. My whole family and I left for all the obvious reasons stated here on this board. I've contemplated my spirituality during this time. Upon first leaving, I continued to pray but not to Jehovah. It was too reminiscent of the witness god. So I prayed to Jesus. Over the years, I always maintained a close relationship to God, and just viewed him as Heavenly Father. Recently I researched deeply into the Gnostic Scriptures spoken of in the Nag Hammadi Library. I felt these writings best fit with my own perception of God is and who Jehovah is not. , The creation story from Genesis and what it is and is not. I've learned that the creator of our own universe, is the chief "Archon" who eminated other demi gods, and these elohim were the creators of matter and chaos, the physical perishable life that comes from matter. This chief Archon is called Yaldabaoth, the blind god, who is later worshipped with his elohims by the earliest Hebrew tribes, who eventually name Yahweh, who boasted he was a jealous god, and besides me there are no other gods. I've read the Secret Book of John, one of the Apocraphon books of early Christians. Jesus explains much of this to the apostle John son of zebedee. It really shows how the Christ came from the ineffable unnameable Father of all..... So facinating to read this after being force fed Watchtower giberish. Truly comforting and refreshing to see that Christ is the emmnation of the Pure light and afterthought of this immeasurable loving God above All. Christ taught this God of Love and Light. He never aknowledged the jehovah gods of the bloody Old Testament. These few teachings have been so freeing and I really get them.
I really wanted to share this with you all. Thank you for taking the time to read my words. I guess what I'm saying is that the Old TestamentHebrew god is the cruel bad tempered , punishing, jealous, confusing god Jehovah (yaldabaoth)