EGINA Volume 2

For future posts, click here.

I discovered something the other day; this blog takes a very, very long time to load for a lot of you.

So I started to play with Blogger's Archiving feature, but a look at my site traffic stats reveals that many people, discovering this for the first time, scroll down and read the whole thing over the course of an hour. So I've decided to make this whole thing the archive, and create a Volume 2 at egina2.blogspot.com.

That's where all the new stuff will go, it'll look the same, and all the old stuff will remain here.

Rethinking "Williams": An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Reasoning

I have four tools in my toolbox: each are heavy objects with a handle and a sticky label.

The first is a hammer with the label "hammer".
The second is a hammer with the label "hammer".
The third is a hammer with the label "hammer".
The fourth is a pipe wrench with the label "hammer".

As the label is sometimes used improperly, we must conclude that there really is no such thing as a "hammer" and we should dispense with the term altogether.

Further;

We have documented evidence that the Cathars had vegetarian diets, that is to say, diets being identical with that of modern-day vegetarians. However, nowhere in the contemporary accounts of Cathar meatlessness is the term "vegetarian" even used! Therefore we must likewise conclude that the Cathars were not vegetarian because they didn't themselves use the word.

Further further;

Medieval seafarers; upon seeing walruses for the first time, often mistook them for mermaids. Modern science of course knows that many of the attributes ignorantly attributed to mermaids (long hair, lovely singing voice, shell-covered boobies) do not apply to walruses. Therefore we must conclude there is no such thing as a walrus.

And yes, he really does employ this reasoning to insist that there's no such thing as us. Instead, we're "biblical demiurgicals"; a term which is merely an awkward euphemism for "Gnostic".

Bart Ehrman says "Doing away with 'Gnosticism' entirely would be to fragment our knowledge to such an extent that we can't know what we're talking about."

Setting Jonas and even Quispel's framing aside, the common thread among "Gnostic" scripture, myth, and movements was and is soteriological; what makes us free is the gnosis of who we were, of what we have become.

Political Tangent: Smart and evil.

So the Conservative government has chosen to commit suicide by calling a Fall vote on whether some Canadians should be less Canadians than other Canadians. Why would they do such a thing? Is it because they are dumb as well as evil? Oh no, Prime Minister Bush... er.. Harper, is smart and evil.

1) The vote will fail, and everybody knows it.

2) Harper is hoping the vote triggers a non-confidence motion, which will be successful and bring down his own government.

3) An election will be called before the Liberals' Leadership Convention in December. As this is scheduled to be a Coronation of the next Prime Minister, forcing a vote before the Coronation will catch the Grits off-guard.

4) Anger (at the Liberals bringing down the freshman cabinet) at such an early election before the Liberals have a chance to rebrand at the convention will result in the same minority government numbers, and give the Conservatives another year in power, at a cost of only $150M of tax payer's money for the election.

I'd do it, if I were their head spin-meister. Here's what I'd do if I were the Liberals.

1) Defeat the idiotic, medieval and mean-spirited vote.

2) Call the non-confidence vote

3) Whip the benches into abstaining from the non-confidence vote you just called.

4) The vote will fail, the Tories will be in power until December, and utterly, utterly humiliated.

5) Have the leadership convention in December

6) 30 seconds after the new leader is chosen – and seriously, who cares who it is, a frozen low-cal entree in a cardboard box would win a majority – call a non-confidence motion on the basis that the current government isn't Liberal, which is against the natural order of all things Canadian.

7) Motion passes, election called, Frozen Entree is sworn in as Liberal Prime Minister for the next 15 years, and we're back to normal.

[Don't like me calling an anti-gay marriage bill evil? One cannot reasonably be in favour of marriage and then exclude adult citizens from entering such an institution on the basis of who they are – it's exactly the same as denying green-eyed persons the right to own property, or keeping the left-handed from having passports. Evil, and I won't call it less.]

The Lost Gospel of Orpheus?

Waterhouse, Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus
Nah, that was a shameless attention grab from a degenerate and jaded copywriter (me). Interesting find nonetheless, as the stories of Orpheus contains seeds of both the Christ and JBap myths. This article's author even throws us a Gnostic bone.

ATHENS, Greece -- A collection of charred scraps kept in a Greek museum's storerooms are all that remains of what archaeologists say is Europe's oldest surviving book -- which may hold a key to understanding early monotheistic beliefs. [...]

"We were now able to read even the most carbonized sections, as there were pieces that were completely blackened and nobody could make out whether there were letters on them," Veleni said.

The scroll contains a philosophical treatise on a lost poem describing the birth of the gods and other beliefs focusing on Orpheus, the mythical musician who visited the underworld to reclaim his dead love and enjoyed a strong cult following in the ancient world.

The Orpheus cult raised the notion of a single creator god -- as opposed to the multitude of deities the ancient Greeks believed in -- and influenced later monotheistic faiths.

"In a way, it was a precursor of Christianity," Pierris said. "Orphism believed that man's salvation depended on his knowledge of the truth."

Veleni said the manuscript "will help show the influence of Orphism on later monotheistic religions."


– Associated Press

What Gives Me The Right?

Some of you are really, really not going to like this.

I'm going start up an "internet church" today. I'll make a nice website, start a Yahoo! group, call myself the Episcopus Emeritus or somesuch. I'll never meet a Parishioner, minister a Sacrament, visit a hospital, sit on a local panel of interfaith dialogue, or wash a dish at a function. We won't go in for any of that dogmatic stuff. Oh my site will be peppered with chunks of Gnostic Scripture, drizzled over almost-entirely-Protestant theology with a little bit of Vatican-bashing ("oppresses women, kept the true secrets of the Faith from the faithful in its Archonic appetite for power..." etc.) and maybe a nice Abraxas gif on the sidebar, right next to the "donate now" button. Ta da! I'm a Gnostic too!

And, being a discerning individual, you will visit my instant website cum church and state that my efforts are "not Gnostic". And probably not even a church. What gives you the right?

I mean, aside from reality, discernment, intelligence, and a genuine desire for the word "Gnostic" to mean something other than soggy Protestant-flavoured New Age-ism, anti-Catholic bigotry, papyrus backgrounds and badly pixelated jpg files?

I'm going to pick on Rev. Troy for a second. Hi Troy. Now, I look at what his Parish is doing, in stark contrast to the above. He's meeting real people in a real space, listening, teaching, learning, leading, paying chapel rent, publishing a calendar, buying candles, (no doubt) failing, forgetting, stumbling, but making something real and beautiful and present. Not to mention the fact that he spent several years of his life in Minor Orders, studying, serving at Mass, being challenged, questioned, examined, and proving not only his intellect and grasp of history and theology but also his praxis and caritas; his willingness to do the work, and his compassion.

I look at that and say "that's Gnostic". Shame on me! What gives me the right?

*Dismounts high horse*

Listen. There's a cave up there, and I'm pretty sure there's treasure in it. Let's go explore it together.

With what? Flashlights? Rope? Canaries? No, we're going to use other tools. Our intellect. Our education. Specific and meaningful language. Our imagination. Our wit and courage and compassion. Our discrimination: discrimination is what keeps us from being so open-minded that our brains fall out. This is how such caves are explored, how such treasures are always discovered.

So Gnosticism is admittedly not entirely binary, in the way, say, that Symbolist painting overlaps the Pre-Raphaelites, and yet is still distinct: the labels exist for a reason. Gnosticism is and must be defined by its soteriology: the idea that gnosis of one's relationship with the Divine is necessary for salvation from Ignorance. When we let it mean "whatever you want it to mean" the word becomes meaningless, and the language that has stood for millennia is no longer remotely useful to us as a tool with which to explore the cave and discover the treasure.

My Licentiate of Sacred Theology doesn't give me the right to this treasure. In fact just the opposite: it says that the ownership is explicitly not mine. The Tradition is there to remind me to hold the treasure in trust, to care for the rights of the next seekers into the cave. I didn't invent my Church, declare myself to be x, and start marking territory. My role is older than I am, and it will outlive me, those who inspire me, and those whom I teach and touch. It's humbling: that's what it's for.

Two Gods?

William Blake, The Red Dragon & The Woman Clothed With the Sun

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?


– WB Yeats

Twice in the last two days I've seen an unusual idea presented: that Gnosticism espouses "two gods"; a deadlocked dueling dualism between the god of spirit and the god of matter. This is of course Manichaeanism, and while Manichaeanism contains many Gnostic elements, this idea is not Gnostic per se – in fact it is ultimately antithetical to positions taken in Thomas and Philip.

Definition time:

Monotheism: the idea of one – and only one – personal "third party entity" Deity.

Polytheism: the idea of many personal "third party entity" Deities

Pantheism: the equation of Deity with the universe (everything is God)

Panentheism: that Deity contains the universe, but the universe does not contain Divinity. "God is everything... and then some."

Chart time:



Perhaps a simpler way to explain is this;

Monotheism: God is one noun
Polytheism: Gods are many nouns
Panentheism: God is one verb with an infinite number of adverbs

The emanations model of Gnostic cosmologies points to an explicitly panentheist view;

Light and Darkness, life and death, right and left, are brothers of one another. They are inseparable. Because of this neither are the good good, nor evil evil, nor is life life, nor death death. For this reason each one will dissolve into its earliest origin. But those who are exalted above the world are indissoluble, eternal.


- The Gospel of Philip

I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained.
Split a piece of wood; I am there.
Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.


- Gospel of Thomas: 77

Gnostic Tradition teaches that the Pleroma "the Fullness") is the Ultimate Godhead; everything – everything – radiates out concentrically from the Godhead like ripples from a stone dropped in water: Christ, Sophia, the Demiurge, you, me, chartered accountants, loofas, squids, ginko trees. The Pleroma is also the stone, and the water, and the idea and act of "dropping". This is a good analogy, as a wave/ripple is a transitory expression of a phenomenon rather than an object unto itself.

Christianity is superficially monotheistic, although a closer reading of scriptural texts proves it to be in fact polytheist yet monolatric; recognizing numerous deities but worshipping only one. In Christianity this is a hangover from Augustine's stint as a Manichaean (think of the cartoon shoulder-angel vs. shoulder-devil). The OT does seem to give God-status to Ba'al (although Ba'al just means "Lord" – it's like hearing fundamentalists say that Muslims don't worship God because they pray to Allah). The Marian cults of the 20th century are clearly evidence of polytheism, although with a great deal of hoop-jumping and spin-doctoring Fatima and Međugorje can be euhemerized away (an act criminal yet predictable).

Given such a context, it is easy to see why Christian apologists would project their own polytheistic God-vs-Satan dualism on panentheistic Gnosticism. Which begs the question: Does the Demiurge exist?

There's an interesting hide-and-seek phenomenon in particle physics; every time somebody theorizes about a new particle x, it's immediately discovered. Never fails. It's as though these things simply hang around waiting to be noticed. I'm not suggesting that we're inventing subatomic particles, but I do want to draw attention to the close relationship between intellectual constructs and observable reality.

"The way of the world" – domestic violence in down-market neighbourhoods, African poverty, sharpied swastikas on synagogues, parochialism and xenophobia and planned obsolescence – this exists as a construct in the minds of six billion and change earthlings. It is a meme, an idea which while not alive acts as though it were a virus, protecting and replicating and insinuating itself. The Demiurge is not some big bad wolf waiting to huff and puff and blow our houses down; he is the acceptability of "the way of the world", a self-fulfilling prophesy of our apathetic inhumanity. Even though the Archons are not real, they act as though they were through provable, observable and (tragically) repeatable phenomena, all the while slouching towards Bethlehem.

And yes, this meme, this set of constructs, of assumptions, is the Demiurge; the half-creator of the world in which we live; what Rastafarians refer to as the Babylon System. The Matrix.

Rejection of such a system does not make us dualists, or polytheists. Recognizing that we, as daughters and sons of God, can and should do better is not "world-hating". We as Gnostics sound the clarion call to accept our responsibility for ignorance and deception, and to awaken to gnosis: not to do battle with some malevolent third-party entity and settle this once and for all in an Armageddon-style smackdown, but to champion the compassion that is the antidote to Archonic force. To make art and poetry and music, to take a lover, raise a child, extend caritas that is just as visible, just as real a ripple in the pool of God.

Gnostic priest addresses Da Vinci Code controversy

By Mark Browne
Victoria News
May 26 2006


Even followers of Gnosticism have something to say about The Da Vinci Code.

But the Capital Region's only ordained Gnostic priest doesn't have the same concerns as conservative Christians angered by Dan Brown's novel and the movie based on the book. While many have suggested that The Da Vinci Code is rooted in Gnosticism, Jordan Stratford says that isn't the case. Stratford's position is explained in his just-released book, The da Vinci Prayerbook.

Many Christians denounce The Da Vinci Code for its premise that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and that the couple had children. The novel and film takes the view, which is consistent with the fourth century Arians, that Jesus was a man and not a divine figure.

Gnostics, on the other hand, consider the image of Jesus to be a purely spiritual being, according to Stratford.

"Purely spiritual beings tend not to have children," he said.

However, Stratford stressed that the notion of Jesus as a spiritual being - and all of the other stories about Christ - should be viewed in a strictly metaphorical sense.

"Gnosticism does not rely on historical literalism in the same way that Christianity does," Stratford explained. "Let's ask the bigger question about what this stuff means."

The idea that Jesus married Mary Magdalene can be understood as myth that conveys the "marriage" between Christian tradition and the older religions of the divine feminine, he said. Moreover, that marriage can be interpreted as a balance between the masculine and the feminine.

"Gnosticism teaches that Mary Magdalene is an expression of the myth of Sophia, the goddess of wisdom and of the holy spirit."

The idea of the sacred feminine was quite prevalent until the fourth century when the Roman church opted for a more patriarchal approach to Christianity with a sole emphasis on Jesus and a de-emphasis on Mary Magdalene.

There's no way of knowing with any certainty whether Jesus married Mary Magdalene and that they had children, Stratford said. At the same time, it's irrelevant whether that hypothesis is true as he reiterates that it's all about the metaphorical meaning.

All that said, myths surrounding the history of Christianity have an important purpose.

"It invites the reader into a mythic space where they can sort these things out for themselves," Stratford said. "These things aren't valuable because they are literally true. They are valuable because they are beautiful."

Gnosticism has been around for the past 2,200 years.

It's a religion that greatly influenced early Christianity, Islam and medieval Judaism, he pointed out. The origins of Gnosticism occurred in a community of Greek-speaking and educated Jews living in Egypt. The religion is essentially a blend of Jewish mysticism, Greek philosophy and the mystery religions of the ancient world, Stratford said.

Gnosticism is similar to Buddhism in that it stresses personal responsibility, compassion and enlightenment, he said.

The 40-year old has been a practicing Gnostic for the past 18 years and now oversees a congregation of 12. Stratford is a priest with the Apostolic Johannite Church. That branch of Gnosticism was established in 1770 by Freemasons, he pointed out. While people of all religions can be members of the Freemasons, there is a strong historical connection to Gnosticism, according to Stratford, a Freemason himself.

People of different religious faiths can also be followers of Gnosticism, he said. Gnosticism is particularly suitable for creative people because of the poetic nature of the stories encompassed by the faith.

"Imagination is prized as a Gnostic value," Stratford said.

While Stratford has concerns about the common perception that The Da Vinci Code is inherently Gnostic, he's quick to point out that the release of the novel and subsequent film is a positive development despite opposition by many conservative Christians.

"It's a starting point for discussion. I don't think anybody should be threatened by debate and dialogue."

For more information on Stratford's book, see the website, www.thedavinciprayerbook.com.

mbrowne@vicnews.com

Well there's some local press. Arrived in my inbox via Google Alerts (which is where most of my Gn news comes from). Ta da!

In HOC Signo

It was of course the older, pagan, Sol Invictus cross, the equal armed cross, to which Constantine owes his victory at Milvian Bridge. It represents the harmonization of the four elements, centering the wearer at its nexus. I have always responded to this "swiss" cross, and my wedding ring has a motif of four of these around it equidistantly.

$5 from the sale of this tee shirt goes to the American Red Cross, which is as worthy a cause as I can think of.

Neither Cup Nor Princess

But the true mysteries of the Sacred Feminine are not about cryptic codes, secret messages, and hidden hoards of treasure. They are the most ordinary, everyday things of life, which we all experience: birth, growth, death, and regeneration. Not that a child survives from some hidden royal bloodline, but that the blood of life, waxing and waning like the moon, nurtures every child in the womb. Not that one man may have risen from the dead, but that every Spring, seeds buried in the earth’s dark tomb sprout and rise anew. The Holy Grail, from the Pagan perspective, is neither cup nor princess: It is the receptive consciousness, our awe and wonder and reverence for the real wellsprings of life. Only the worthy can find the Grail.


–Starhawk, Is 'The Da Vinci Code' Good for the Pagans?

Yeah, I called her "Mimi". O, how we laughed and laughed... it was the '80s.

Pagels on "The Truth at the Heart of the DVC"

So many Christians throughout the world knew and revered these books that it took more than 200 years for hardworking church leaders who denounced the texts to successfully suppress them. [...]

Irenaeus said there could be only four gospels because, according to the science of the time, there were four principal winds and four pillars that hold up the sky. Why these four gospels? He explained that only they were actually written by eyewitnesses of the events they describe -- Jesus' disciples Matthew and John, or by Luke and Mark, who were disciples of the disciples.

Few scholars today would agree with Irenaeus. We cannot verify who actually wrote any of these accounts, and many scholars agree that the disciples themselves are not likely to be their authors. [...]

What, then, do these texts say, and why did certain leaders find them so threatening?

First, they suggest that the way to God can be found by anyone who seeks. According to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus suggests that when we come to know ourselves at the deepest level, we come to know God: "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.'' This message -- to seek for oneself -- was not one that bishops like Irenaeus appreciated: Instead, he insisted, one must come to God through the church, "outside of which,'' he said,
"there is no salvation.''

Second, in texts that the bishops called "heresy,'' Jesus appears as human, yet one through whom the light of God now shines. So, according to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus said, "I am the light that is before all things; I am all things; all things come forth from me; all things return to me. Split a piece of wood, and I am there; lift up a rock, and you will find me there.'' To Irenaeus, the thought of the divine energy manifested through all creation, even rocks and logs, sounded dangerously like pantheism. People might end up thinking that they could be like Jesus themselves and, in fact, the Gospel of Philip says, "Do not seek to become a Christian, but
a Christ.'' [...]

Worst of all, perhaps, was that many of these secret texts speak of God not only in masculine images, but also in feminine images. The Secret Book of John tells how the disciple John, grieving after Jesus was crucified, suddenly saw a vision of a brilliant light, from which he heard Jesus' voice speaking to him: "John, John, why do you weep? Don't you recognize who I am? I am the Father; I am the Mother; and I am the Son.'' After a moment of shock, John realizes that the divine Trinity includes not only Father and Son but also the divine Mother, which John sees as the Holy Spirit, the feminine manifestation of the divine.


– Elaine Pagels, Perspective

James Ingall Wedgewood, 1883-1951

Happy Birthday, Wedgie!

Bishop Hoeller has a wonderful must-read article on the Wandering Episcopate; the piece contains one of my favourite lines in modern Gnosticism:

The seeming promise residing in the wandering bishops is obscured and at times negated by the personal eccentricities and unsavory character of a large number of these bishops. Since consecration to the episcopate is often so easily obtained in the subculture of the wandering ones, venal, unstable, and woefully ill-educated persons abound in the ranks of the "independent" episcopate. Quite a large number of these bishops are simply people one would not wish to invite to dinner.

Bearing that in mind, I raise a glass to Ole Uncle Wedgie, truly an exception to that unfortunate rule. The liturgies of both the AJC and EG run rich with the legacy of the Liberal Catholic Church – +Wedgewood was one of the first to recognize that much of the mysticsm and transcendence the Victorian Theosophists sought in the East was abundant in the liturgical traditions of the West as well.

Gnostic Celebs: Tori Amos?

There was a garden
In the beginning
Before the fall
Before Genesis

There was a tree there
A tree of knowledge
Sophia would insist
You must eat of this

Original sin?
No, I don't think so
Original sinsuality
Original sin?
No, it should be
Original sinsuality
Original sin?
No, I don't think so
Original sinsuality

Yaldaboath
Saklas
I'm calling you
Samael
You are not alone
I say
You are not alone
In your darkness
You are not alone
Baby
You are not alone


– Tori Amos, The Beekeeper: Original Sinsuality

The Denver Post reports; "Tori Amos writes in her memoirs Tori Amos: Piece by Piece about the importance of Gnosticism to her personal growth."

Amos' pal Neil Gaiman (he moved into a house owned by Amos and her husband to write American Gods) has long been suspected of being a closet-Gnostic, and there may be a third degree due to the acquaintance (I read they were friends) of Gaiman with the Gnostic V for Vendetta and Promethea author Alan Moore.

Tori Amos' music has accompanied some very pivotal times of my life; one adopts such artists and their mediated sympathies as old friends. And she's not Tom Cruise, which is a definite plus.

Now on to the inevitable conversion of Scarlett Johansson, and my plan will be complete.

Gnostic Priest Authors "The da Vinci Prayerbook"

Victoria BC (PRWEB), May 19, 2006 – An ordained Gnostic Priest Jordan Stratford has just released a response to the The da Vinci Code phenomenon. Dan Brown's bestselling novel and upcoming film have drawn out countless critics deriding the work as "Gnostic", and now for the first time Gnostics are taking the opportunity to speak for themselves.

The irony is that the premise of Brown's novel isn't Gnostic at all, and the word never occurs in the book. Rather than reject the divinity of Jesus, Gnostics in the early Christian Church understood that the Logos, the incarnated Word of God, was always immortal.

Gnosticism is a 2200 year old religion that greatly influenced early Christianity, Islam, and medieval Judaism. Its origins lie in a community of Greek-speaking and -educated Jews living in Egypt around 200 B.C., and blended Jewish mysticism, Greek philosophy, and the Mystery religions of the ancient world. Similar to Buddhism, Gnosticism stresses personal responsibility, compassion, and enlightenment.

So do Gnostics believe that Jesus really married Mary Magdalene?

"Literally, no," says Stratford. "This myth can be understood as the "marriage" of both the Christian tradition and the older religions of the Divine Feminine.

"Gnostics have always used myth deliberately not to obscure but to explore with its symbolism, as part of a search for meaning – much the way artists have always done, and psychologists do today."

The da Vinci Prayerboook: Gnostic Reflections on the Divine Feminine is an exploration of the myths around the Magdalene, the Grail, the Templars, and Leonardo himself in this light. Rather than attempt to revise history or propose conspiracies, the book is a small collection of scriptural references from Gnostic, Christian, and Jewish literature, and one Gnostic's reflection on these sacred writings.

The da Vinci Prayerboook (Azrael Press, 100pp) is available at the book's website, thedavinciprayerbook.com

- 30 -
Sent this out to local media and PR Web today, and I post this not out of more book hype but to show that Gnostics are speaking for themselves.

Represent!

The da Vinci Prayerbook

Site is live, with a few important bits to come, but the book can be previewed and purchased by clicking here.

All Nuptialed

Many blessings and thanks especially to Erik and Michelle of the Aquarian Tabernacle Church – the ceromony was held in an historic cemetery, and was a combination of elements from the AJC, ATC, and EGM, with poetry from Robin Skelton, William Shakespeare, and Pablo Neruda.

Best. DVC Review. Evah.

The Da Vinci Code is a wildly contrived story about how the forbidden love between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, the Brad and Angelina of Judea, was revealed by Renaissance fresco-paparazzi, and later immortalized by Pierre Plantard, the L. Ron Hubbard of France, in the 1960s with his fabulous hoax called the "Priory of Sion," which author Dan Brown, the Tom Cruise of literature, took seriously.


– Betty Bowers,Landover Baptist

I've always loved Landover as a viciously acidic guilty pleasure, although I prefer the gentler satire of Lark News.

Yeah, okay, I'm going to go get married now.

Scholars & Goddesses

SUCH faith may explain why Wicca is thriving despite all the things about it that look like hokum: it gives its practitioners a sense of connection to the natural world and of access to the sacred and beautiful within their own bodies. I am hardly the first to notice that Wicca bears a striking resemblance to another religion – one that also tells of a dying and rising god, that venerates a figure who is both virgin and mother, that keeps, in its own way, the seasonal "feasts of the Wheel," that uses chalices and candles and sacred poetry in its rituals. Practicing Wicca is a way to have Christianity without, well, the burdens of Christianity. "It has the advantages of both Catholicism and Unitarianism," observes Allen Stairs, a philosophy professor at the University of Maryland who specializes in religion and magic. "Wicca allows one to wear one's beliefs lightly but also to have a rich and imaginative religious life."

Charlotte Allen, Scholars & Goddesses

Getting Married

...on Saturday, so posting will be non-existent for a week or so. Also, expect e-mail to be slow. Also also, don't take this the wrong way, but I'm not going to miss any of you. ;-)

Blessings and joy,

J+

סֵפֶר הַבָּהִיר: The Book of Brightness

"There is a striking affinity between the symbolism of Sefer ha-Bahir, on the one hand, and the speculations of the Gnostics, and the theory of the "aeons," on the other. The fundamental problem in the study of the book is: is this affinity based on an as yet unknown historical link between the Gnosticism of the mishnaic and talmudic era and the sources from which the material in Sefer ha-Bahir is derived? Or should it possibly be seen as a purely psychological phenomenon, i.e., as a spontaneous upsurge from the depths of the soul's imagination, without any historical continuity?

– "Bahir", Encyclopedia Judaica "

Excellent question. More on the Bahir, and a tip o' the yarmulke to the Soferet.

Pulled

There has been a rash of articles recently, posted mostly by Protestant Christian pundits, claiming that the falloff in mainline church attendance is due to the fact that yoga, tai chi, "spirituality" and the occult are easy, whereas Christianity is hard. Ofttimes Gnosticism is explicitly counted among the easy.

Easy?

Part of the reason I identify as a Gnostic is that firmly around my right wrist is the inexorable pull of the Roman Catholic Church; its solidity, ubiquity, liturgy and aesthetic. I could be so Catholic it's not funny: and not one of those tie-dyed chasuble guitar-Massing Vatican II theowobbly neo-Caths either, but a full-frontal SSPX Tridentine UberTraddie.

A similarly continual but contrary tug around my left wrist is Judaism; its wit, iconoclasm, spiritual literacy, and humanity.

My brain – well it thinks like a Buddhist. I trained it that way; to doubt, and to doubt my doubts, to suspend, detach, examine. and defer always to compassion.

But at the very center of these forces is my Witch's heart; my blood is salty with poetry and sex and lunar magics and imagination. The turning of autumn leaves brings out cravings for bonfires and woad and howling to the Great Mother.

Needless to say this agon, this ongoing negotiation of forces, is for the most part crazy-making, and it's little wonder that in any conversation I undertake I come across as a dilettante bibliophile, with either too much Kerouac or too little; either an overdose or tragic deficit of Aristotle. An ADD-addled molotov-hurling William Burroughs vs. my inner pipe-smoking tweedy Victorian Latin-spouting harrrrumph!er. Easy?

So how do I, personally, equilibriate these opposing forces? By identifying, fighting for, and championing common ground in Her name. Shekhina. The Holy Spirit. Sophia. By the understanding (Gnostics don't have beliefs, we have understandings), as in Theodoto, that what makes us free is the gnosis of who we are, of what rebirth truly is.

And what it is, is work.

Easy. Pffft.

Feast of St. Ratford

How will your family celebrate this special day? With the customary offerings of red wine and sushi? Secretly judging people by their shoes? Or by drinking too much coffee and arguing theology in chatrooms? Post your stories, and any craft ideas for the children...

The Blurbs are In

I've received, through the generosity and kindness of some very special people, some very kind words about the book. The tricky part is in "blurbing" them, which is to say, chopping the things into sentence fragments and making tight, punchy sentences for teeny tiny space allowed by book-cover real estate. I'm tremendously humbled and overwhelmed;

"Explores the Code phenomenon from a spiritual point of view without radically revising Western history...acknowledging that ideas need not be historical in order to be spiritually meaningful. Stratford has opened the way."

– Lesa Bellevie, Editor The Magdalene Review and Author, The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Mary Magdalene

"Fresh and accessible, a brilliant overall picture of the myth – The da Vinci Prayerbook is a bridge connecting artists, mystics, and writers of the past with readers of today. This is required reading for seeker and devotee alike... a perfect work of Sophianic inspiration and insightful scholarship."

– Bishop +Rosamonde Miller

“Fr. Jordan makes a thoughtful exploration of the Magdalene tradition, gently peeling back the veil to reveal a glimpse of the real mystery of the Bridal Chamber.”

– Jennifer Emick, About.com

Beltane: I join'd them fairly with a ring

Deprived of root, and branch, and rind,

Yet flowers I bear of every kind:

And such is my prolific power,

They bloom in less than half an hour;

Yet standers-by may plainly see

They get no nourishment from me.

My head with giddiness goes round,

And yet I firmly stand my ground;

All over naked I am seen,

And painted like an Indian queen.

No couple-beggar in the land

E'er join'd such numbers hand in hand.

I join'd them fairly with a ring;

Nor can our parson blame the thing.

And though no marriage words are spoke,

They part not till the ring is broke:

Yet hypocrite fanatics cry,

I'm but an idol raised on high;

And once a weaver in our town,

A damn'd Cromwellian, knock'd me down.

I lay a prisoner twenty years,

And then the jovial cavaliers

To their old post restored all three--

I mean the church, the king, and me

Did Thomas Write Thomas?

When you know yourselves, you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father.
I've been re-reading Jeremy Puma's extraordinary manuscript, The Face of Heaven and Earth, which is slated to go to press in May. Of course any discussion of a Gnostic Gospel is topical these days, with an irritatingly disproportionate attention paid to the dating of such texts. The reasoning goes, if it wasn't written in the first century then it can't have been written by the person who claims to be the author, and therefore is unreliable. All that matters, the thinking goes, is authorship, not content, and authorship is entirely authenticated by date.

[We'll have to set aside the illogic of this insistence, at least for the time being, as yet another instance of psychic literalists putting all their eggs in one basket (at their peril).]

Dr. Elaine Pagels, currently in the crosshairs of an ad hominem attack by modern-day Iranaeuses, suggests that Thomas may have influenced John, and we know John was around in 130 because we have one. But Pagels may be wrong; she readily admits this is conjecture (let's not get dragged into this belittling of her scholarship and play into the hands of the New Inquisitors, okay?).

We should bear in mind the following;

1) The basic story of the canonical Gospels predates the biblical scenarios by millennia

2) The words attributed to Jesus in the NT are mostly paraphrasing of the Old Testament, and in numerous instances, quotes of Socrates

Because we're firmly in the realm of myth here, repetition of themes is to be expected. It's okay. The origins of the material in no way make it less spiritually resonant. It is what it is.

So did Thomas write Thomas? Was there really a series of secret conversations between John the Apostle and Jesus resulting in The Gospel of Thomas?

No.

Judas didn't write Judas either. These texts authors weren't trying to fool anybody; they were using a literary technique common in the ancient world of employing known characters to convey wisdom tradition. It's not history, it wasn't meant to be history, and the first audiences of this material were smart enough to realize that.

The first audiences of Mark were probably smart enough to realize it, too.

As I said, any discussion of these texts is met with the refutation that the Gnostic Gospels are too late to accurately describe their events as history (assuming that they were meant to do so, which they weren't), and that the canonical Gospels are first-century eyewitness accounts. I accept that this is accepted by the majority of biblical scholars. I also accept that it's based on... absolutely nothing.

We don't have any first century canonical Gospels. We don't have any first century mention of any first century Gospels. We have Paul, and evidence of first-century oral transmission. And that's it.

There are two writers who at first glance appear to be potentially useful for determining which (canonical) gospels were in circulation by the early second century. First, it appears possible that Ignatius of Antioch was familiar with Matthew when he wrote his letters around 110 C.E. In various passages, Ignatius seems to allude to the gospel, although he does not mention it explicitly. Most of these passages, however, are vague references at best and could easily be the result of oral tradition. Also, careful examination of the Matthew-Ignatius parallels reveals an interesting trend. Ignatius has an overwhelming preference for material found in Matthew, but not the other synoptics. This excessive familiarity with special M material has suggested to some that Ignatius may have known a source of Matthew rather than the gospel itself.

Second, Papias of Hierapolis mentioned writings by Matthew and Mark in his five volume Oracles of the Lord Explained around 130 C.E. ... Thus, it is not certain that Papias was describing either canonical Matthew or Mark...

Three gospels must have been written after 70 C.E.; how long after is anybody’s guess. Two gospels must have been written before the end of the first half of the second century C.E.; how long before is anybody’s guess.


– Journal of Biblical Studies

The arguments for ignoring the evidence and dating all the canonical gospels in the first century are as follows:

1) Everbody else does.

2) Ummm... shut up.

A defense of the orthodox take is here, but every argument made can be countered with a Q. If late-first-century Christians over here agree with late-first-century Christians over there, it does not prove that they all found Gideons in their hotel rooms; rather it suggests access to a common source (or sources) of oral material.

The Gnostic Gospels don't matter because they're contemporary with the canonical Gospels (which they are), they matter because they're beautiful. Because they speak to the imagination and our nascent recognition of the indwelling Divine. Not because they happened (they didn't), but because they are Real.

Lesa's Manifesto

Lesa Bellevie, Editrix of the excellent Magdalene Review, to which I am indebted for obvious reasons, posts a truly wonderful "Personal Manifesto":

1. As a general rule, I dislike ‘conspiracy’ as an historical theory.

2. I believe in defending history, critical thinking, and rigorous scholarship.

3. I am skeptical of revisionism but am willing to entertain new ideas.

4. I do not believe that history is predicated on what what is spiritually meaningful.

This one is my favourite;

9. I believe that truth is an indication of archetypal resonance.

Lesa is also the author of TCIGT The Mary Magdalene.



Definitely worth the read (both book and site).

Back-of-the-book Blurb and Wrap Cover

A Gnostic Priest Takes On The Code

Rather than dissecting history and analyzing conspiracy theories, ordained Gnostic Priest Jordan Stratford invites the reader to explore and celebrate the meaning behind the myths and to discover the Divine Feminine in the Western Mystery Tradition. Rejecting dogmatic literalism in favour of investigation, intuition, and personal reflection, The Da Vinci Prayerbook offers a glimpse into the Secret Church of the Magdalene and the Holy Grail; not a hereditary bloodline but a transmission of gnosis – the knowledge of the Heart.

Includes the complete Gospel of Mary Magdalene

Going to press as soon as the blurbs come back (gentle poke).

Back-of-the-book Photoshoot

St. Ratford, Authoritative-yet-friendly




'BAD Demiurge! BAD!"




April Mass

All thanks to the talents of Davin Greenwell and not the irrefutably lovely and indispensibly talented Zandra Gutierrez whom I did not credit on that March Mass pic.

10 Things Religious Pundits Need To Know About Gnosticism

"We don't need to take the Gospel of Judas / Thomas / Mary seriously, because unlike Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it wasn't written in the first century, wasn't written by eyewitnesses and is not historically true. It was written by an elitist world-hating sect called the Gnostics who were rejected by early Christians as heretics. Gnostics preached that the flesh was evil, and salvation was only available to a select few who had secret magical knowledge, or gnosis."


– Every bible "expert" in the western world in the last three weeks.

I've read variations on this spiel at least twenty times this month. The problem is that this summation of Gnosticism is entirely false, and in many cases known by its proponents as false; this is bearing false witness.

1) Gnosticism is not a heretical sect of Christianity

Gnosticism is a distinct, pre-Christian religion. Its roots are in Alexandria in Egypt, about 2200 years ago, where a "café-society" of Greek-speaking and -educated Jews were syncretizing the myths of the ancient world with Judaism and classical Greek philosophy.

These communities and their ideas greatly influenced Christianity as it later emerged. As Christianity struggled in its first four centuries to distinguish itself from the pagan world, it slowly began to reject some of these Gnostic influences. But most of the people who still favoured these ideas considered themselves devout Christians, not heretics.

Let us not forget that the most common topic in the New Testament – more common than the power of love or redemption or the sacrfice of the cross or even the divinity of Jesus – is that "other Christians are getting it wrong". Paul condemns James as a heretic. Jesus refers to Peter as "Satan".

2) Gnosticism is a lot like Buddhism

Because of Gnosticism's insistence on personal responsibility and ethics, its emphasis on singular prayer, the practice of compassion, detachment from materialism and the striving for enlightenment, it has been called "the Buddhism of the West". The similarities between Gnosticism and Mahayana Buddhism are so strong it has been speculated that there may have been ongoing contact between the two religions.

3) The Gnostic Scriptures are, for the most part, contemporary with Christian canon

None of the four canonical Gospels were written in the first century. Mark was not written by Mark, nor Luke written by Luke. John was written in two distinct phases, the first of which showed significant Gnostic elements, and the latter a retraction and condemnation of those elements. These were based on first century oral traditions which varied greatly from region to region, but did not exist in written form until at least 100 years after the events they describe. Paul is the only first century Christian writer we have, and much of his writings were edited centuries later into the form we have today.

The Gospel of Thomas, for example, is contemporary with the later half of John, and there is some evidence to support that John's later editors were familiar with Thomas. The scriptural authors of the second century were reaching for meaning, using their interpretation what they had heard, their intuition, their creativity, and their yearning for G@d.

4) Gnostics do not hate the physical world

Gnostic scripture frequently invokes favourably the beauty and power of the natural world; the symbolism of pregnancy, midwifery, childbirth, newborns, storms and ripe crops are frequently employed by Gnostic authors. Gnostics do not view the flesh as evil, but rather as temporary when contrasted with the immortality of the soul - a view shared by most if not all Christians.

What Gnostics reject is not the earth, but they system: the artificial world of injustice, prejudice, institutionalization and materialism.

5) Gnostics do not repudiate salvation through Grace

The role of Grace, and of the Holy Spirit, is of paramount importance to the Gnostics. Where Gnosticism differs from Christianity is that Gnosticism says that "blind faith" does not grant salvation. To be saved from the forces of deception and ignorance (maya in Buddhist parlance) one must attain enlightenment: the direct experiential intimacy with G@d that is gnosis. This experience is the birthright of every aware human person.

6) Gnosticism is not elitist

Do Christians distinguish between the saved and the unsaved? Is this elitism? Gnostic teachings frequently reinforce the idea that liberation via gnosis is available to everyone; that such distinction is a matter of reclaiming birthright, of intent, choice, and effort. In fact, Gnostic theology tends to support the idea of apokatastasis, of universal salvation.

7) Gnosticism is not Utopian.

There is nothing in Gnostic scripture to support the idea that Gnostics wish to make "heaven on earth" from human efforts, and no connection whatsoever between Gnosticism and the reshaping of society; neither from fascism nor socialism. There is no "immanentizing the eschaton" in Gnosticism: Rather, this idea is the hallmark of millennialist Christianity.

8) Most basic tenets of Gnosticism are supported by Christian scripture

In fact there is a litany of Christian saints who are blatantly Gnostic; St. Francis of Assisi, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Hildegard of Bingen and St. Joan of Arc all described in detail the integrity of their experience of gnosis.

Paul says "The Kingdom of G@d is within you" which is probably the best single summation of Gnostic theology. Jesus says "My kingdom is not of this world" (Jn 18:36).

9) Gnosticism serves as a bridge between world religions

Gnosticism stands at the crossroads of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, representing a common ground. Historically Gnosticism influenced Judaism in the development of Kabala, and Islam in the development of Sufism; it both encouraged and challenged Christianity through its early centuries and contributed profoundly to Christian theology and identity.

10) Gnostic churches are thriving

Gnostics across North America and Europe gather weekly for prayer and Eucharist in forms very similar to orthodox liturgy. We derive inspiration from the Old and New Testaments, and also from Nag Hammadi scripture such as The Gospel of Thomas and The Thunder: Perfect Mind. A vital and growing Gnostic ekklesia is serving in charities, missions and hospitals; writing, crafting, debating and working in coffeehouses and dozens of parishes around the world. Most Gnostics consider themselves Christian, their churches constituting the Body of Christ. Other Gnostics gravitate to the symbolism and traditions of the Divine Feminine in her aspect as Sophia ("wisdom"), the Shekhina ("presence"), and the Holy Spirit.

Despite book-burnings, despite the Albigensian Crusade and the Inquisition, despite schlock-populism, and despite inane castigations from self-appointed pundits, we are still here; still praying, celebrating, exploring, and asking. Still Knowing.

The Feast of Terra Mater

The earth is at the same time mother,
She is mother of all that is natural,
mother of all that is human.
She is the mother of all,
for contained in her are the seeds of all.
The earth of humankind contains all moistness,
all verdancy, all germinating power.
It is in so many ways fruitful.
All creation comes from it.
Yet it forms not only the basic raw material for humankind,
but also the substance of the Incarnation.


– Hildegard von Bingen

"She feeds first and asks questions later."

"The nourishing quality of the Eucharist, freely offered to anyone who's famished, has always been a central metaphor for me. I don't partake because I'm a good Catholic, holy and pious and sleek. I partake because I'm a bad Catholic, riddled by doubt and anxiety and anger; fainting from extreme hypoglycemia of the soul. I need food. 'O Holy One,' I pray as I savour the host,'as this bread nourishes my body, so may your spirit nourish my soul. Grow strong within me, I pray, and let me live my life in your praise.' God doesn't place conditions on the hungry. She feeds first and asks questions later."


– Nancy Mairs, Ordinary Time , Beacon Press, 1993

[pinched from Another Country]

Da Vinci Prayer Book Cover Sneak Preview

You're Writing a What?

Heaven

I don't need no one to tell me about heaven
I look at my daughter, and I believe.
I don't need no proof when it comes to God and truth
I can see the sunset and I perceive


– LIVE, Heaven

I did not attend Conclave over Easter Weekend. There was a plane ticket, but I did not get on that flight.

There was a "family emergency"; shock, horror, anger, tears, and mourning at the mere threat of the loss of innocence. A reminder of human fragility, and all we cling to is tissue easily torn by archonic forces of suspicion, innuendo, assumption. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. We spent the weekend bruised, shaken, and nauseated.

And yet, in the end, all is well. I clung to my lover and my children, held them as I wept and gave thanks for the dodging of bullets, for this season of passing-over. No damage done, all are well, safe, oblivious and happy. Now the patient work of healing, of restoration.

Ora pro nobis.

Diaconal Ordination of Rev. Scott Rassbach

Many blessings and congratulations to the Rev. Deacon Scott Rassbach of Columbus, Wisconsin, ordained this Easter weekend at St. Joseph of Arimethea Parish in Calgary.

AD SACRVM FLAMMVM

Wearing White for Eastertide

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

– A.E. Housman

Leonardo da Vinci: April 15, 1452

Trickster,, genius, scoundrel, artist, mathematician, ren-punk, alchemist, inventor, ne'er do-well, polymath.

In honour of Leo's birthday, I finished my manuscript.

Happy Birthday, O draconian devil!

Palm Sunday

“The images are manifest to man, but the light in them remains concealed in the image of the light of the Father.”

– Gospel of Thomas

This is the day of the declaration of the light, in mindful provocation – in outright defiant challenge – of archonic Authority. This is the day of knowing who we are, and wherein we have been cast; the day of Identity and Identification.

We each of us today cease to conceal our light, knowing that we are a beacon guiding our enemies – the multitude that is our attachment, our jealousies, our petty preoccupations – to the inevitable destruction of what we know as our lives. The Light of Sophia encourages us, literally gives us the heart to step forward into our identity.

Do we need laurels for this? Do we need medals and diplomas and corporate helicopters to speed us to a satellite-fed press conference? No, we need our humility, our simplicity. We ride into the welcoming throng of Jerusalem on an ass.

The donkey is our everyday self: it is this which transports the Christ-in-us forward into the City of Wholeness, ירושלים. The pedestrian nature of the vessel in no way diminishes the Divinity of the wine.

This is our hour; they will have theirs. Soon there will be a surge in the tide of darkness, and all our hope will be undone; our lives and selves are to be flensed away by overwhelming archonic force. But like Aslan on the stone table, bound beneath the gloating, murderous Jadis, we may yet have a surprise in store, mightn't we?

For contemporary Gnostics, the symbolism of the palm has added significance...

The Gnostics believed in two temporal ages: the first or present evil; the second or future benign. The first age was the Age of Iron. It is represented by a Black Iron Prison. It ended in August 1974 and was replaced by the Age of Gold, which is represented by a Palm Tree Garden.

– Philip K. Dick, Tractates Cryptica Scriptura

Posting will be light over Holy Week as I prepare for conclave at St. Joe's. Blessings.

“I Know Who You Are and Where You Have Come From. You Are From the Immortal Realm."

Yesterday was Gospel of Judas day, the public release of the third-century Gnostic text that has every early-church pundit scrambling for airtime like it was the Da Vinci Code all over again.

Is it an authentic Gospel? Yes.

Did it really happen? No. To be fair, Mark didn't happen either. Deal with it.

If it didn't happen, does it matter? I think so. It's not just insight into theological puzzling in the third century, I think there is some Wisdom here. Of course one reading is not going to do it; I'm looking forward to some time of reflection and absorption.

When he approached his disciples, gathered together and seated and offering a prayer of thanksgiving over the bread, he laughed.

The disciples said to him, “Master, why are you laughing at our prayer of thanksgiving? We have done what is right.”

He answered and said to them, “I am not laughing at you. You are not doing this because of your own will but because it is through this that your god will be praised.”

This gentle chastisement is I think a great lesson. The disciples here are not offering a eucharist, a thanks-giving, because they are not truly thankful. The root of the word is charis, grace (which is why they call it "saying grace") and Grace is not present here. They are, essentially, hedging their bets, trying to please God by going through the motions. Instead of acting through the heart, through the will, they are merely trying to appease some third-party entity, likely out of either rote or some fear of retribution for omission. The Master laughs at how pointless this is; the disciples here are monkeys at typewriters, bashing at keys with little hope of resultant meaning.

But God caused gnosis to be given to Adam and those with him, so that the kings of chaos and the underworld might not lord it over them.

This is from a riff on cosmogeny strikingly similar to that of The Apocryphon of John, which itself is a later Christianization of the Hermetic Poimandres. And of course the line that jumps up and down and says "I'm a Gnostic text!"

But you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.

And the payoff. If the crucifixion and resurrection are Divine Plan, then Judas' betrayal is the fulcrum on which all of it rests.

The most interesting part in all of this is the delegation and institutionalization of the role of the Slayer in this myth. In earlier forms it is the Brother who is the Nemesis of the Hero; see how the sociopolitical milieu dictates that in this version, the Nemesis is part of an overarching mechanism of persecution: Judas, the Romans, Pilate – not one character, but an entire kosmos of characters. Judas is the earthly "brother" of Jesus just as Lucifer is the heavenly brother of Michael, but the Judaean backdrop of the story requires that Judas have an entourage including a cohort (100 soldiers), an angry mob, and the entire Sanhedrin.

The New York times has a PDF of excerpts here, and there is a very good National Geographic resource here.

Enjoy.

Sacred Cows Actually Gnostic Gnus?

I love this strip. SpiritPainter consistently addresses God in two ways; when God speaks, it is as a discarnate voice asking patient questions. When the characters speak of God, it is invariably of the Demiurge (as in this example above).

There's also a link on the Sacred Cows site to BritGnostic Poster Boy Tim Freke; are the Sacred Cows actually meant to be Gnostic Gnus?

Apologies for the reformatting; the strip won't fit in my blog columns. Zucchetto tip to the ever-lovely Jennifer for the link.

Enough of the cheap shots at Christianity

It's become fashionable to take shots at the Christian religion. In a lot of otherwise civilized circles, the faithful and the faith itself are an easy object of prejudice; and worse, it's a prejudice you can get away with.

...I call it secular fundamentalism — one more example of the strict maintenance of doctrine, without actual experience of "the other," a bubble that actively screens out different points of view. What secular fundamentalists ignore is that ad hominem attacks on Christianity make permissible ad hominem attacks on any religion or philosophy. Who's next?

...The connection between Christianity and political power is enough to make this believer hang her head. And yet, to attack this Christianity as all of Christianity is, of course, an error. It ignores the fact that medieval Christianity was reformed — by Martin Luther and the Church of England, among others. But most of all, it neglects a history that includes someone such as the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who organized the Confessing Church to resist Nazi exclusion laws, joined the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler and paid for it with his life.

Bonhoeffer believed that the heart of what it meant to be a Christian was to act on behalf of the marginalized — the helpless, the sick, the poor, the friendless. He distinguished between what he called "cheap grace," that form of lip service I think we can all identify with, and "costly grace," meaning the kind that gets you into trouble.

If I think of costly grace, I remember the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks; the abolitionists; the Christians of Jubilee 2000 who successfully pressured Britain and the United States to forgive the developing world's crippling debt; the Quakers who protect and advise pacifists; the women and men who work daily in soup kitchens, for living-wage ordinances, against torture at Guantanamo Bay. None of us has done enough, and that is partly why so many people only know about the Christianity that cozies up to power.

...If I could, I'd return to early Christianity, before it became a state religion under Constantine, before its connection to the state, when it was a company of friends whose inspired leader once said that the one without sin should pick up the first stone.


– Nora Gallagher, LA Times

The Secrets of Judas

[Got a note from Robinson's publicist asking if I'd post this guest article: I think we all owe this man's scholarship a debt, and so I'm happy to shill for him just this once.]

Judas Iscariot is, if not the most famous, then surely the most infamous, of the inner circle of Jesus' disciples. He was one of the Twelve Apostles who stuck with Jesus through thick and thin to the bitter end, until the night of the Last Supper when he led the authorities to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Was Judas just fulfilling prophecy, implementing the plan of God for Jesus to die for our sins, doing what Jesus told him to do? Why else would he identify him with a kiss, all for a measly sum of thirty pieces of silver? What do the Gospels inside the New Testament -- and then what does The Gospel of Judas outside the New Testament -- tell us about all this? . . .

A “Gospel”? By “Judas”?

The Gospel of Judas was composed after the canonical Gospels were written, at about the same time as the Nag Hammadi Gospels were written. No doubt, like them, The Gospel of Judas made use of the title Gospel to accredit itself over against the canonical Gospels that had popularized the title in their own quest for accreditation. As a result, we assume not only that The Gospel of Judas was not written by Judas – after all, he had been dead for over a century – but may not be what the public assumes a Gospel would be -- a collection of the stories and/or sayings of Jesus. For the four Gospels among the Nag Hammadi Codices have shown that the honorific title could be ascribed to works which we today would never call Gospels, if that title had not been attached to them in the tradition. The Gospel of Judas will in all probability teach us a lot more about the Gnosticism of the second century, than about the public ministry of Jesus, or sayings of Jesus, or Holy Week, or the like.

How has Judas been understood down through the centuries, after the New Testament presented him as giving Jesus over to the Jewish authorities, and The Gospel of Judas somehow vindicating him?

In antiquity, to fall on one’s sword when one’s leader is slain is considered a noble death. Should not Judas’ suicide after Jesus’ crucifixion be accorded this distinction of being a noble death? Apparently it was first Saint Augustine who decided that Judas’ suicide was in fact a sin.1 Listen to the way Augustine put it: 2 

He did not deserve mercy; and that is why no light shone in his heart to make him hurry for pardon from the one he had betrayed.



And so, irrespective of what one might think of Judas giving Jesus over to the Jewish authorities, as implementing God’s plan of salvation, or as a traitor betraying his friend, he cannot be forgiven for his suicide!

The most generous that early Christian monasticism could be to Judas was to suggest that Jesus forgave him, but ordered him to purify himself with “spiritual exercises” in the desert, such as they themselves practiced.

In the seventh century, the Bible commentator Theophylact thought Judas had not expected things to turn bad once he arranged a hearing between Jesus and the Jewish authorities, and in anguish at the outcome killed himself to “get to Hades before Jesus and thus to implore and gain salvation”: 3 

Some say that Judas, being covetous, supposed that he would make money by betraying Christ, and that Christ would not be killed but would escape from the Jews as many a time he had escaped. But when he saw him condemned, actually already condemned to death, he repented since the affair had turned out so differently from what he had expected. And so he hanged himself to get to Hades before Jesus and thus to implore and gain salvation. Know well, however, that he put his neck into the halter and hanged himself on a certain tree, but the tree bent down and he continued to live, since it was God’s will that he either be preserved for repentance or for public disgrace and shame. For they say that due to dropsy he could not pass where a wagon passed with ease; then he fell on his face and burst asunder, that is, was rent apart, as Luke says in the Acts.

A Dominican preacher, Vinzenz Ferrer, in a sermon in 1391, had a similar explanation for the suicide, that Judas’ “soul rushed to Christ on Calvary’s mount” to ask and receive forgiveness: 4

Judas who betrayed and sold the Master after the crucifixion was overwhelmed by a genuine and saving sense of remorse and tried with all his might to draw close to Christ in order to apologize for his betrayal and sale. But since Jesus was accompanied by such a large crowd of people on the way to the mount of Calvary, it was impossible for Judas to come to him and so he said to himself: Since I cannot get to the feet of the master, I will approach him in my spirit at least and humbly ask him for forgiveness. He actually did that and as he took the rope and hanged himself his soul rushed to Christ on Calvary’s mount, asked for forgiveness and received it fully from Christ, went up to heaven with him and so his soul enjoys salvation along with all elect.

Yet the all-too-rampant anti-Semitism of the Middle Ages exploited Judas as the arch-betrayer in order to arouse just such sentiments, by painting him as a caricature of a Jew, with exaggerated features, a large hooked nose, red hair, and of course greed for money. . . .

        1 A. J. Droge and J. D. Tabor, A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom among Christians and Jews in Antiquity (SanFrancisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), cited by Klassen, Judas, 168 and 175.
        2 Klassen, Judas, 47, quoting Augustine, City of God, 1.17 and Sermon 352.3.8 (Patrologia Latina, 39:1559-63).
        3 The translation, by Morton S. Enslin, “How the Story Grew: Judas in Fact and Fiction,” in Festschrift in Honor of F. W. Ginrich, ed. E. H. Barth and R. Cocroft (Leiden: Brill, 1972), is quoted by Klassen, Judas, 173.
        4 Quoted by Klassen, Judas, 7.
Copyright © 2006 James M. Robinson from The Secrets of Judas: The Story of the Misunderstood Disciple and His Lost Gospel by James M. Robinson Harper San Francisco; April 2006;$19.95US; 0-06117-063-1
James M. Robinson is the founding director emeritus of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, and professor emeritus at Claremont Graduate University. He is the author of Trajectories Through Early Christianity and A New Quest of the Historical Jesus. He is widely known for his pioneering work on the Sayings Gospel Q and the Nag Hammadi codices and was the general editor of The Nag Hammadi Library in English. Robinson's latest book, The Secrets of Judas is available at all major booksellers.

The Feast of St. Joan of Arc, Gnostic and Martyr

Now the flames they followed Joan of Arc
As she came riding through the dark;
No moon to keep her armour bright,
No man to get her through this very smoky night.
She said, I’m tired of the war,
I want the kind of work I had before,
A wedding dress or something white
To wear upon my swollen appetite.

Well, I’m glad to hear you talk this way,
You know I’ve watched you riding every day
And something in me yearns to win
Such a cold and lonesome heroine.
And who are you? she sternly spoke
To the one beneath the smoke.
Why, I’m fire, he replied,
And I love your solitude, I love your pride.

Then fire, make your body cold,
I’m going to give you mine to hold,
Saying this she climbed inside
To be his one, to be his only bride.
And deep into his fiery heart
He took the dust of Joan of Arc,
And high above the wedding guests
He hung the ashes of her wedding dress.

It was deep into his fiery heart
He took the dust of Joan of Arc,
And then she clearly understood
If he was fire, oh then she must be wood.
I saw her wince, I saw her cry,
I saw the glory in her eye.
Myself I long for love and light,
But must it come so cruel, and oh so bright?

– Leonard Cohen

GnostiQuaker

At the very centre of the Quaker faith lies the concept of the Inner Light. This principle states that in every human soul there is implanted a certain element of God's own Spirit and divine energy. This element, known to early Friends as "that of God in everyone", "the seed of Christ", or "the seed of Light", means to Friends, in the words of John 1:9, "the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world".

Friends generally believe that first-hand knowledge of God is only possible through that which is experienced, or inwardly revealed to the individual human being through the working of God's quickening Spirit.

[...] George Fox acknowledged that there is "an ocean of darkness and death" over the world. But he also saw that "an ocean of light and of love" flows over this ocean of darkness, revealing the infinite love of God. Friends believe that the power of God to overcome evil is available in the nature of anyone who truly wants to do the will of God. To a great extent, we are the arbiter of our own destiny, having the power of choice.

[...] There is always an element of mystery about love which people cannot fully penetrate, but Friends are convinced that it has a timeless quality. Love cannot be destroyed by death and cannot be limited by time and space.

– Meeting the Spirit: An Introduction to Quaker Beliefs and Practices

Bill over at Seeking the Light posted recently about the relationship between ideas in Gnosticism and the Society of Friends (Quakers). These similarities have been noted before, and even a quick reading will show that we in the greater Gn Ecclesia have much to learn from (and share with) our Friends.

Quaker-Gnostic, Gnostic-Quaker

Ostara

Spring, 1896, Alfonse Mucha

The daffodils
Were incidental gilding of the deeds,
Treasure trove. They simply came,
And they kept on coming.
As if not from the sod but falling from heaven.
Our lives were still a raid on our own good luck.
We knew we'd live forever. We had not learned
What a fleeting glance of the everlasting
Daffodils are. Never identified
The nuptial flight of the rarest epherma-
Our own days!
We thought they were a windfall.
Never guessed they were a last blessing.
So we sold them. We worked at selling them
As if employed on somebody else's
Flower-farm. You bent at it
In the rain of that April-your last April.
We bent there together, among the soft shrieks
Of their jostled stems, the wet shocks shaken
Of their girlish dance-frocks-
Fresh-opened dragonflies, wet and flimsy,
Opened too early.


– from Daffodils, Ted Hughes

Abide in Peace and Love

The Holy Logos has put away all your sins. Abide in peace and love.

This is, or rather I think should be, the scariest part of the Ritual. Realizing (making real) that the mind of the Divine, the moving, hermetic Under Standing of all transcendent Being, has set aside every misstep, every harsh word, premature judgment, each sliver of malice poking nastily into your existence. Carte blanche. Do over. You hit the rim last time, but here's the ball again. (And here's the scary part: ABIDE IN PEACE AND LOVE.) This ain't no Sunday School la la la little fluffy bunnies dictum. This is the trickiest thing we, as humans, have going on.

How do you do that? How do you not only get to that place of peace and love, but actually stay there? This is the distinction, I think, between gnosis and charis: between Knowledge and Grace. So how to remain in a state of grace? I have heard this challenge, and offered it: abide in peace and love. It sounds easy enough. But how to do it? What does peace really mean? What does it mean to abide in love?

It is not peaceable to "carry on", to drive to work and watch tv and eat whatever it is we eat. Our daily existence is so at odds with our host organism/home planet that just having carpet is, in a way, an act of violence. My recycling boxes are likely made of some carcinogen, my children's clothes likely produced in conditions we'd find horrifying; and possibly by those whom the clothes would still fit.

Neither is it peaceful to hurl invectives outside of factories, waving placards and shouting slogans. Not peaceful to sneer at SUV drivers or "God Hates Fags" chanters. How then, to be discerning, responsible (able to respond) and non-judgmental? I do like the challenge "be the change you would see in the world"; the kind of fingertip charity that is in its own way a kind of long-view libertarianism. If I see you, I'll take care of you, and I trust that if you see another you'll take care of them.

The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.
– Thich Nhat Hanh

The key, it seems, is compassion. To act confidently and compassionately; whether joyously or with solemnity. To bolt to our being the idea that those things which cause conflict – resources, materia, territory, physicality – are fleeting and in the long run not worth seeking to possess and control. The compassion of others toward us reminds us of the love that Wisdom has for us, of the sacrifice of the Fallen Word for our sake; to awaken us from the slumber of pettiness and malice into the waking maturity of gnosis. Our compassion for others is nothing less than kindling the Sacred Flame that is alive and present in the world.

Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn't anyone who doesn't appreciate kindness and compassion.
– Dalai Lama

Abide in peace and love. I dare you.

Gnovena Candles

Gnostic Gnovena Candles from Fr. Troy+'s Gnostic Shop.

Hope for Civilization

I'm in the wine store buying a nice Languedoc (Cathar country!) Merlot for Mass, when someone, engaged in mid-conversation and clearly looking for a name, stops me and just points at me;

Him: Greek guy. With the rock. Starts with a T.
Me: Uhh... Sisyphus?
Him: That's him, yeah. So anyways....

and continues his conversation.

Now I think there's something to be said for a society in which one can, in the midst of buying wine, ask a a complete stranger for an obscure name from Greek mythology, and proceed as though it were no big deal.

Carry on.

Earth-based Traditions in Judaism

Kohenet, the Hebrew word meaning priestess, signifies both spiritual leadership and embodiment of and service to the Divine. The Kohenet Training Intensive seeks to revitalize the Jewish connection with the Divine feminine and to reclaim the ancient role of women as facilitators of sacred experience. Looking deeply into our ancient tradition, we find thirteen archetypes of women serving, nurturing and strengthening spiritual community through embodied, ecstatic and earth-centered practice.

Drawing on legends and mystical teachings from the Jewish tradition, Near Eastern myth, and women's wisdom across the generations, the Kohenet training innovates uniquely feminine models of Jewish spiritual leadership, cultivating a network of women devoted to serving the Shechinah through weaving traditional Jewish practice with the emerging and evolving needs of Jews, women and the planet as a whole.


– Kohenet


Look into Jewish texts and find the heartbeat of the earth. Follow the moon's phases and feel the Shekhinah, the Divine presence. Walk among the elements and the seasons. Enter Tel Shemesh, the hill of the sun, and warm yourself by the sacred fire.

According to the story in the Torah, the mishkan, the Divine dwelling-place, was a place where God encountered the world in a tangible way, hovering in a cloud inside the innermost shrine. Above the Ark of the Covenant, where the presence of God, the Shekhinah, rested, two golden cherubim faced one another. Aviva Zornberg, a renowed biblical interpreter, once proposed that “God is in the place where the two gazes intersect.” The cherubim faced each other on the Ark, in spite of the Israelite prohibition against images, to remind us that we meet the Divine through encounter. This is the meaning of covenant. Though Jews understand God as a unity, there is always a “twoness” to the Divine presence, for in order to be felt, the Presence must meet with another.


– Tel Shemesh

[tip o' the yarmulke to Aviel for tasty links. The problem with Gnosticism is that it's not Jewish enough.]

When God Is a Monster

Three weeks ago, Dr. Wafa Sultan was a largely unknown Syrian-American psychiatrist living outside Los Angeles, nursing a deep anger and despair about her fellow Muslims.

Today, thanks to an unusually blunt and provocative interview on Al Jazeera television on Feb. 21, she is an international sensation, hailed as a fresh voice of reason by some, and by others as a heretic and infidel who deserves to die.

In the interview, which has been viewed on the Internet more than a million times and has reached the e-mail of hundreds of thousands around the world, Dr. Sultan bitterly criticized the Muslim clerics, holy warriors and political leaders who she believes have distorted the teachings of Muhammad and the Koran for 14 centuries.

She said the world's Muslims, whom she compares unfavorably with the Jews, have descended into a vortex of self-pity and violence.

..."Knowledge has released me from this backward thinking. Somebody has to help free the Muslim people from these wrong beliefs."

Perhaps her most provocative words on Al Jazeera were those comparing how the Jews and Muslims have reacted to adversity. Speaking of the Holocaust, she said, "The Jews have come from the tragedy and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling."

...Dr. Sultan is "working on a book that — if it is published — it's going to turn the Islamic world upside down."

"I have reached the point that doesn't allow any U-turn. I have no choice. I am questioning every single teaching of our holy book."

The working title is, "The Escaped Prisoner: When God Is a Monster."


– NY Times

I am deeply moved by the doctor's courage and integrity on this issue, despite repeated threats of violent death against herself and her family. In the article, Dr. Sultan states that she no longer identifies herself as a Muslim. It does sound like she's using the language of another religion here...

Gnosticism: It's Not Just for 2nd Century BCE Hellenized Alexandrian Jews Anymore!™

Church of St. Coelacanth, Reformed

So Much to Choose From: A Tour of Vanished Christianities
Gnostics, Sethians, Encratites...what if Christianity had remained as diverse as it was when it first began?

By Richard Valantasis

Excerpted from "The Beliefnet Guide to Gnosticism and Other Vanished Christianities."

Alternative Christianities are only "alternative" because other, competing forms of Christianity rose to dominance. As a historian I often wonder what the world would have looked like if one of these now-vanished forms of Christianity had assumed the mantle of orthodoxy—or if Christianity had remained as pluralistic as it was when it began. Imagine for a moment that Gnostic Christianity had survived this early process of natural selection and that what we now call orthodox Christianity had become extinct.

You are a devout Gnostic Christian who has just moved to a new city. In the parish you moved away from, you had participated in a Gnostic spiritual group that eagerly devoted itself to Bible study, prayer and meditation, both solitary and communal; you also engaged in intense theological and spiritual debate. You and the members of your spiritual group expected far more out of church than what could be garnered from a Sunday morning worship service and coffee hour.

You believe in the superiority of the spiritual world; you distrust the material, created world. You believe that the Bible provides instructions for an ascent out of the material world and into God’s realm—and the Bible you study includes books that don’t appear in Catholic or Protestant Bibles today, such as The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Mary, and the Apocryphon of John. You log onto the Internet to find a similar church in this new city...


– BeliefNet

Gosh! Just imagine if there were actually real live Gnostics! With, like, Gnostic Churches and Bishops and everything! Too bad they all died of "natural selection" (failing to become fireproof) in the face of superior orthodoxy.

The author's overwhelming ignorance saddens me. Our people were slaughtered, our scriptures burned; the murderers of Hypatia, The Albigensian Crusade, the Inquisition do not constitute "natural selection". I do wonder if he realizes how tremendously offensive this is, and the degree to which he paints himself as a dilettante. Give me five minutes alone in a locked room with this man; with access to Google. Would Valantasis be surprised, I wonder, at our curious resurgence, hooked like a Coelocanth from the depths of history?

V for Vendetta

"I've read the screenplay," Mr. Moore said. "It's rubbish."


–NY Times interviews Alan Moore on the upcoming release of the film.

Despite Moore's protestations (and adaptation track-record including The Pile of Extraordinary Crap, er, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) I intend to see the film, dealing as it does with the Gnostic themes of identity, memory, and resistance in the face of totalitarianism. A story by a Gn author, brought to the screen by Gn directors... hmmm... could go either way.

Quotations: Henry Miller

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.

• • •

Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.

• • •

Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.

• • •

Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.

• • •

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.

• • •

The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.

• • •

Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.

IN MEMORIAM

PROFESSOR GILLES QUISPEL
May 30, 1916 - March 3, 2006

There are not enough candles in the world to light in honour of the tremendous gift he has given us. Rest, Professor, in much deserved Peace.

[zooch tip to Terje for bringing this sad news]

"Maybe Mark just made a mistake."

The Bible simply wasn't error-free. The mistakes grew exponentially as he traced translations through the centuries. There are some 5,700 ancient Greek manuscripts that are the basis of the modern versions of the New Testament, and scholars have uncovered more than 200,000 differences in those texts.

"Put it this way: There are more variances among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament," Ehrman summarizes.

Most of these are inconsequential errors in grammar or metaphor. But others are profound. The last 12 verses of the Gospel of Mark appear to have been added to the text years later -- and these are the only verses in that book that show Christ reappearing after his death.

Another critical passage is in 1 John, which explicitly sets out the Holy Trinity (the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit). It is a cornerstone of Christian theology, and this is the only place where it is spelled out in the entire Bible -- but it appears to have been added to the text centuries later, by an unknown scribe.

For a man who believed the Bible was the inspired Word of God, Ehrman sought the true originals to shore up his faith. The problem: There are no original manuscripts of the Gospels, of any of the New Testament.

He wrote a tortured paper at Princeton that sought to explain how an episode in Mark might be true, despite clear evidence to the contrary. A professor wrote in the margin:

"Maybe Mark just made a mistake."

As simple as it was, it struck him to the core.

– The Book of Bart

This is the heartbreaking journey of one man, an NT scholar, who loses his faith after finding out the bible isn't entirely factual. Bibliolatry is the cultish obsession with scriptural authority, looking for absolutist prose in a cloud of poetry, of metaphor. I think its price is an inevitable sadness.

It seems to me this is the invariable result of "Jesusism" when it confronts reality. It is the great poverty of Protestantism, in its mechanistic rejection of mystery, is that it tends to put all its eggs in one basket; which is to say, that the core of the religious experience is dependent upon the verifiable impeccability of literalist history. If the Bible is the unerrant word of God, then any error that can't be explained away makes God vanish in a puff of analysis. This is a losing game, looking for logic and history and artifact when one rather ought to be looking for meaning and inspiration.

When we climb Mt. Olympus looking for the sandal-straps of Zeus, we come away empty handed. If in doing so we decide to chuck the lot of Homer away to the shredder, we come away impoverished. The Great Lie of Christianity, if there is one, is to mistake the universal for the specific. To pretend that Christ isn't Bacchus, isn't Osiris, isn't here, but rather a Gallilean paragon separated from us not just by thousands of years and thousands of miles but also by unattainability, is to pretend that, except for the Jews, God was just elsewhere for the entirety of the human experience. It's evil. And it misses the point, like forcing a haiku to rhyme. The fetishizing of scripture, whether Mark or The Gospel of Philip, is to ask too much of their fallible, human authors, and too little of their redactors.

The "cheap seats" myth of Judaism is that Moses wrote the "Old Testament" himself. This gets repeated, even though Torah scholars know that it isn't true. But the dissolution of that myth does not in any way discount the moving power of Genesis – which is ultimately the font of Gnosticism, in my opinion. Likewise, you can tell a Buddhist that Buddha is an amalgam of centuries of teachers, schools, and individual practitioners, and they will certainly refrain from both burning their texts and conversely attacking the Buddha-disprovers. For Gnostics, "The Word of God" is not a book, but trather the living, everpresent Logos.

This article too had me reflecting on the distinctions within our movement, between Christian Gnostics and Gnostic Christians:

A Gnostic Christian is a Christian exploring his or her Christianity through Gnostic symbolism and language.

A Christian Gnostic is a Gnostic celebrating his or her gnosis via Christian symbolism and language.

This latter circumstance seems to me perhaps more ultimately forgiving.

Your Own. Personal. Jesus.

I love a good, well-researched criticism of Gnosticism. There are very rare and precious things. This is part of a lecture by New Testament scholar N.T. Wright, Anglican Bishop of Durham, who has been hailed as "The C.S. Lewis of our time":

Second, the Nag Hammadi codices have taken a large step away from a narrative world and into detached aphorisms and isolated teachings. There is no attempt to tell the story of Jesus or even stories about him, or to see that story and those stories within the context of the larger story of God and the world, of God and Israel. They show all the signs of having been abstracted from that setting, as though someone were to go through Shakespeare’s plays and extract all the great one-liners without any attempt to show where they belong within the dramas of which they form part.

This is a very fair comment, and too often missed by many contemporary Gnostics. We don't have the background. We're not sure who the authors are, what they were thinking, or even if the versions of Gn Scripture we have are in their original languages.

You may salve your own conscience by embracing Gnosticism, by telling yourself how very wicked the world is and how you are going to escape it once and for all by following the path of spiritual self-discovery and enlightenment. But if Caesar takes any notice at all, all he will do is sneer at you and go on his way to yet more triumphs of sheer power. And if that happened in the second century, we can be sure it’s precisely what’s happening today. Heidegger and Bultmann couldn’t prevent Hitler; Derrida and Foucault and their numerous disciples can’t do anything to stop the new empires of today.

Again, a very true criticism. As I have said repeatedly, Gnosticism – like Buddhism – is not in the social engineering business. When we act collectively and charitably, it tends to be out of immediate compassion and local action. Gnosticism per se would not have prevented Hitler: But neither of course did Christianity. And yes, Caesar sneers. "The empire never ended."

Neo-Gnosticism is the philosophy that invites you to search deep inside yourself and discover some exciting things by which you must then live. It is the philosophy which declares that the only real moral imperative is that you should then be true to what you find when you engage in that deep inward search. But this is not a religion of redemption. It is not at all a Jewish vision of the covenant God who sets free the helpless slaves. It appeals, on the contrary, to the pride that says “I’m really quite an exciting person, deep down, whatever I may look like outwardly” — the theme of half the cheap movies and novels in today’s world. It appeals to the stimulus of that ever-deeper navel-gazing (“finding out who I really am”) which is the subject of a million self-help books, and the home-made validation of a thousand ethical confusions. It corresponds, in other words, to what a great many people in our world want to believe and want to do, rather than to the hard and bracing challenge of the very Jewish gospel of Jesus. It appears to legitimate precisely that sort of religion which a large swathe of America and a fair chunk of Europe yearns for: a free-for-all, do-it-yourself spirituality, with a strong though ineffective agenda of social protest against the powers that be, and an I'm-OK-you're-OK attitude on all matters religious and ethical. At least, with one exception: You can have any sort of spirituality you like (Zen, labyrinths, Tai Chi) as long as it isn’t orthodox Christianity

Ouch, and yet. Where I think Wright falls down is in his assumptions that Gnosticism is easy and Christianity is hard. ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΑΥΤΟΝ – Know Thyself – is a simple enough imperative, but grasping that, living that, is a lifelong challenge on our road to Grace. Yes, please, I will forego the "Jewish vision of the covenant God who sets free the helpless slaves". Leave me instead the Sacred Flame that the Divine has placed within me, kindled by the love of the Holy Sophia. Leave me the responsibility (the ability to respond) for my own Salvation, armed with what the Trinity has bestowed; my Witch's wit, my capacity to love, my boundless ability to fail, my hunger, my absurdity, my imagination, my humanity.

At the beginning of the lecture, Wright bemoans the five elements of what he calls the "mainstream liberal-American myth of Christian origins", which are essentially;

1. That there are/were bazillions of first-century documents about Jesus, that give us the Real Deal™;

2. That the Canonical Gospels are post-Real Deal™, and were politically selected in the 4th Century;

3. That Jesus was not what or whom the Canonical Gospels say he is;

4. That Christianity is based on either a mistake or a lie, and is sexist, puts empty milk cartons back in the fridge and probably doesn't recycle;

5. That it's time to get back to the Real Deal™ which is practically anything (UFO Jesus, Married Merovingian Jesus, Che Jesus, insert the Jesus of your choice here) except traditionally accepted Ortho-Jesus.

I would say that he's hit the nail on the head, and that 21st Century Christianity is confused as all get-out. However, it seems to me that what he and other advocates of small-o orthodoxy propose is equally untenable;

1. That the Canonical Gospels present a non-contradictory accurate chronicle of historical events;

2. That they were produced in the first century;

3. That they represent the literal understandings of the overwhelming majority of Christians from the mid-first century up until the Council of Nicea in 325; and

4. That the Canonical Gospels represent the Word of God, and presumably the myriad redactions, censorings, and typos represent the Redactions, Censorings, and Typos of God. Presumably too the outright forgeries pseudoepigraphically attributed to Paul are the Outright Forgeries of God.

I don't see how we get much closer to the truth by replacing one set of literalist misunderstandings for another. How do we benefit from overthrowing the anachronism of totalitarian modernism, only to replace it with the anachronism of totalitarian medievalism? Some sticking points;

1. The Canonical Gospels are wildly contradictory and are clearly unintended to be read as historical chronology.

2. I do not believe that Wright is being truthful when he states that the Canonical Gospels date to around 90 CE or earlier. I would put good money on the fact that he knows perfectly well that they date from the mid-to-late second century, and are in fact contemporary with Thomas.

3. The first 300 years of Christianity were messy. Church X maintained one pivotal, fundamental point that was decried as heresy by Church Y half a days donkey ride away. It cannot be denied that there was never a point in the history of Christianity that it was not syncretic and coloured by local pre-Christian traditions. Nicea was no picnic. There was screaming and one notable punch in the nose. It was called specifically because there was no agreement, no widespread adoption of liturgy, canon, or theology. I'm not falling for the old "Christ became God by a narrow vote" nonsense, but the degrees to which Platonism and elements of Classical Paganism were allowed to contribute were hotly debated. The Council and Creed didn't exactly slow this down much, either.

4. Well, one can't argue with Faith. What's the point?

What I'm saying in all of this, is that when Christians criticize Gnosticism for being awkward, confusing, and self-contradictory, that they really ought to bring some credibility to the table and not go overboard. But oh how I do welcome the criticism! From someone who actually reads stuff! This kind of analysis is priceless to us, and keeps us from drinking our own bathwater.

Read the article.

Dies Cinerum: Sophia on the Day of Ashes

Shekhina Project, Leonard Nimoy
"Remember that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return."
For the Gnostic, this isn't maudlin, nor is it a sugar-coating our material existence. There is a tremendous virtue in contemplation of our impermanence, and the resulting detachment. The danger, of course, is the tempting slide into nihilism:

... our body will be ashes and our spirit will be poured abroad like unresisting air.

Even our name will be forgotten in time, and no one will recall our deeds. So our life will pass away like the traces of a cloud, and will be dispersed like a mist pursued by the sun's rays and overpowered by its heat.

For our lifetime is the passing of a shadow; and our dying cannot be deferred because it is fixed with a seal; and no one returns.
– The Book of Sophia, Chapter 2

In Wisdom these are the words of the unwise, who court despair at worst and frivolousness at best. What they learn in the remainder of the text is that, yes, earthly attachment is fleeting, but the point of existence remains through the love and alliance of Sophia:

Resplendent and unfading is Sophia, and she is readily perceived by those who love her, and found by those who seek her.

She hastens to make herself known in anticipation of men's desire; he who watches for her at dawn shall not be disappointed, for he shall find her sitting by his gate.

For taking thought of her is the perfection of prudence, and he who for her sake keeps vigil shall quickly be free from care; Because she makes her own rounds, seeking those worthy of her, and graciously appears to them in the ways, and meets them with all solicitude.

For the first step toward discipline is a very earnest desire for her; then, care for discipline is love of her; love means the keeping of her laws; To observe her laws is the basis for incorruptibility; and incorruptibility makes one close to God; thus the desire for Wisdom leads up to a kingdom.

If, then, you find pleasure in throne and scepter, you princes of the peoples, honor Sophia, that you may reign as kings forever.

...

The spirit of Sophia came to me. I preferred her to scepter and throne, And deemed riches nothing in comparison with her, nor did I liken any priceless gem to her; Because all gold, in view of her, is a little sand, and before her, silver is to be accounted mire.

Beyond health and comeliness I loved her, And I chose to have her rather than the light, because the splendor of her never yields to sleep.

Yet all good things together came to me in her company, and countless riches at her hands;

And I rejoiced in them all, because Sophia is their leader, though I had not known that she is the mother of these.

...

For Sophia, the artificer of all, taught me. For in her is a spirit intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, agile, clear, unstained, certain, Not baneful, loving the good, keen, unhampered, beneficent, kindly, firm, secure, tranquil, all-powerful, all-seeing, and pervading all spirits, though they be intelligent, pure and very subtle.

For Sophia is mobile beyond all motion, and she penetrates and pervades all things by reason of her purity.

For she is an aura of the might of God and a pure effusion of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nought that is sullied enters into her.

For she is the refulgence of eternal light, the spotless mirror of the power of God, the image of his goodness.

And she, who is one, can do all things, and renews everything while herself perduring; And passing into holy souls from age to age, she produces friends of God and prophets.

For there is nought God loves, be it not one who dwells with Sophia.

For she is fairer than the sun and surpasses every constellation of the stars. Compared to light, she takes precedence; for that, indeed, night supplants, but wickedness prevails not over Sophia.

Gospel of Judas: Fragments

St. Jude, Elaine Savoie
And they threw themselves down, prayed and said: 'Oh Lord God who resides high in the great Aeons, who has no beginning and no end! Give us gnosis. Reveal us Your secret so we could receive our knowledge: where we come from, where we are going to, and what we have to do with our lives.' After these words spoken by Allogenes, he revealed himself

And when I said this, see, a cloud of light surrounded me. I could do nothing, I was enclosed in the light surrounding and shining on the cloud. And I heard a word out of the cloud and the light. And the light shone upon me and said: Oh Allogenes! Your pleas are heard and I am being sent to you in this location to go and spread the Glad Tidings. But you have not found an escape from this prison yet…

– Recent translations from the second-century Gospel of Judas

I love how this is shaping up. It appears to be about a dust-up between the Logos in the characterization of Allogenes, the Stranger, and the Demiurgic Saklas, the Fool, who is also called the Ruler of the World here. Note too the litany also found in Theodoto.

The attribution to Judas is fascinating, as it means literally "the Jew", often associated in Christian literature with a psychic or pre-pneumatic state: Saved, but unenlightened [Disclaimer: I don't think this is very polite.] There are a bazillion Judases in the Christian Gospels: Iscariot, Thaddeus, Brother-of-James, and of course Judas Thomas, the twin. Instead of playing the losing game of who is whom, I tend to look at the connections.

Jesus is declared to be the brother of James, as is "Jude", so Jude = Brother of Jesus. Judas Thomas is identified in tradition as Jesus' twin (ergo also brother of James) and in some stories takes his brother's place upon the cross to fool the authorities, both local and Archonic. Curiously, in Da Vinci's The Last Supper James is represented as Jesus' identical twin. If all these characters are taken to be archetypes, then they are facets of one gem, variations on a theme of the kinship between the earthly and the spiritual.

Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon and the assumed betrayer, is usually left out of these myriad family associations, but his role in the Passion is pivotal. The Cainites maintained that, despite his unfair vilification, Judas is in fact asked to play his part with full knowledge of cosmic consequence, and is therefore to be praised, selflessly carrying out this incredibly difficult sacrifice in fulfillment of the Divine plan. Origen argued that Judas hanged himself in order to meet Christ in the afterlife to beg forgiveness.

As for the delightful image above, it reminds me of Abraxas, whose rooster-head crows the dawn; a herald for the coming of the light.

The Gnostic Eve

Eve, Sir Thomas Brock, 1900, Tate Gallery

A few selected readings on the role of the Great Mother in Gnostic literature;

When God had created me out of the earth, along with Eve, your mother, I went about with her in a glory which she had seen in the aeon from which we had come forth. She taught me a word of gnosis of the eternal God. And we resembled the great eternal angels, for we were higher than the god who had created us and the powers with him, whom we did not know.

– Apocalypse of Adam

I am thou and thou art I, and wherever thou art, there am I, and I am sown in all things; and whence thou wilt, thou gatherest me, but when thou gatherest me, then gatherest thou thyself

– Gospel of Eve

After the day of rest, Sophia sent her daughter Zoe, being called Eve, as an instructor, in order that she might make Adam, who had no soul, arise, so that those whom he should engender might become containers of light. When Eve saw her male counterpart prostrate, she had pity upon him, and she said, "Adam! Become alive! Arise upon the earth!" Immediately her word became accomplished fact. For Adam, having arisen, suddenly opened his eyes. When he saw her, he said, "You shall be called 'Mother of the Living'. For it is you who have given me life."

Then the Archons were informed that their modelled form was alive and had arisen, and they were greatly troubled. They sent seven archangels to see what had happened. They came to Adam. When they saw Eve talking to him, they said to one another, "What sort of thing is this luminous woman? For she resembles that likeness which appeared to us in the light. Now come, let us lay hold of her and cast her seed into her, so that when she becomes soiled she may not be able to ascend into her light. Rather, those whom she bears will be under our charge. But let us not tell Adam, for he is not one of us. Rather let us bring a deep sleep over him. And let us instruct him in his sleep to the effect that she came from his rib, in order that his wife may obey, and he may be lord over her."

Then Eve, being a force, laughed at their decision. She put mist into their eyes and secretly left her likeness with Adam. She entered the tree of knowledge and remained there. And they pursued her, and she revealed to them that she had gone into the tree and become a tree. Then, entering a great state of fear, the blind creatures fled.

– On the Origin of the World

More OW goodies here: Magna Mater. Highly recommended is Another Eve: A Case Study in the Earliest Manifestations of Christian Esotericism, by Laura Hobgood-Oster, Southwestern University.

Everything Else is Commentary

This week I had the pleasure of catching up with Monsignor Ken Madden+, in town briefly from St. Joe's in Calgary. While waiting for our Chinese take-out order, we drank green tea and talked about the crisis in the Anglican Church, in which Msgr K+ is a Reader. We spoke of the fundamental issue at hand, which appears to be praying next to someone who disagrees with you; a problem from which we Ecclesiastical Gnostics do not suffer as we tend to assume that our perspectives are our own anyway. We came up with a few intriguing parallels;

You enter an art gallery and are enjoying a painting. Would you expect a visitor standing next to you to see it the same way? Would you be offended if they did not? Or if you suspected they did not?

Would you watch a movie in a theatre and expect the patrons in the next row to feel the same way about the acting, the script, the effects, or the subtext? Would it bother you to share 90 minutes in a darkened theatre with someone who's background – philosophically, financially, racially, emotionally – was other than yours?

Some years ago while I was teaching University I was eating fries in the mall next to the downtown campus between classes. In walked a lawyer infamous for defending white supremacists and holocaust deniers, flanked by two skinheads in "hey, check it out, I'm a white power skinhead" mode. While it made me sad to see them, propped up by their uniforms and malice and cheap shock-value, I just finished my fries. It was the food fair in the mall. If, at that moment, everyone there got up to sing "O Canada", their interpretation of the words would be far, far different from my own. The point is that the food fair at the mall is big enough for everyone to get hot greasy carbs into them as quickly as possible. I have the right to my opinions about them, and my society has legal protections from their intent. If they want to go home and Sieg Heil each other in their living rooms, it's absolutely none of my business.

Now I realize that a Church is not a movie theatre or an art gallery or the mall. But you get my point: who am I to say that someone who walks in the door to a Church, to learn and understand an honour their own connection with the Divine, must agree with me about composting, or foreign policy, or senate reform?

The big upside to panentheism, as the Monsignor and I were sharing, is that everything is G@d. You can't get away from it. The Commandments to love G@d and to love thy neighbour are essentially the same, because no part of your neighbour is not Divine. It makes you unafraid of different perspectives about religion, as everything – everything – is a facet of the Divine. This transcends both relativism and absolutism, in fact such arguments are meaningless in the face of the absence of fear; in the lack of attachment to winning arguments. Gnosis is knowing in your bones that Sophia is in the steam from a teapot in a Chinese restaurant, knowing that closeness, that imminence. Everything else is commentary.

Confessions of a Raging Vatiqueen

For some, it's tracking Brad and Angelina a la Pink is the New Blog; for others the stalkerism manifests as determining Ben Affleck's choice of baby stroller. My own obsessive deviance is the oh-s0-precious Vatican stalking of Rocco Palmo's Whispers in the Logia. Trust me, the petty posturing and pedantic power-plays of modern indie-Catholic schizmophiles and the eBay-scopate ain't nothin' compared to the Princes of Rome. If we ecclesiastical Gnostics had any sense of style whatsoever we'd all be poisoning each other's mistresses by now.

Whispers deliciously fetishizes the who-didn't-get-invited-to's and who's-wearing-what's of the Eternal City, down to the last Consistory, Levada appointment, and Santa-Claus camauro. Palmo recently postulated that the gregarious JP2 wore simple white so as not to distract from his crowd-working mojo, whereas B16's penchant for Serengeti, Prada, and liberaceite-encrusted pectorals is all about tha bling to compensate for his natural shyness. Rottweiler Schmottwieler: Couldn't you just eat him up with a spoon?.

It's not all mincing mitres though; Whispers recently brought to my attention the work of Italian celeb-theologian Archbishop Bruno Forte of Chieti-Vasto, who's considered indictment of modernism and "fatherlessness" kept me chewing on this for days;

Thought without shadows becomes tragedy; far from emancipating, it generates suffering, alienation and death. The modern "society without fathers" does not bear children who are freer and more equal, but, instead, produces dramatic dependencies on those who at various times offer themselves as "surrogate" fathers. The "leader", the "party", the "cause", these become the new masters, and the freedom promised and dreamt of turns into a painful, grey manipulation of the masses, held in place by violence and fear. The collective murder of the father did not prevent this proliferation of these new, barely camouflaged, "fathers” and “lords"..

[...] This is the drama with which the twentieth century closed: a moral drama, a crisis of meaning, a vacuum of hope. Not so different was the beginning of the new Millennium, if one thinks of September 11th 2001 and its consequences of violence and war. If, for modern reason, everything found meaning within one all-encompassing process, for the "weak thought" of the post-modern condition - shipwrecked on the great sea of history after the collapse of ideology's claims - nothing seems to have meaning anymore. In reaction to the failed claims of "strong" reason, then, there emerge the contours of a time of shipwreck and collapse; this crisis of meaning is the characteristic of the post-modern restlessness. In this "night of the world" (Martin Heidegger), what seems to triumph is indifference, a loss of the taste for seeking ultimate reasons for human living and dying. And thus, too, we reach the nadir of modernity and its dialectical overcoming, that is nihilism....

This is the triumph of the mask over truth: even the very values themselves are often reduced to banners hoisted to camouflage the lack of real meaning. Human beings seem to be reduced to a "useless passion" (the expression used, disturbingly ahead of the times, by Jean-Paul Sartre: "l'homme, une passion inutile"). One could say that the most serious malady of this so-called post-modern age is the definitive abandonment of the search for a father-mother towards whom to hold out our arms, our no longer having the will or desire to seek a meaning worth living and dying for.
Orphaned by the ideologies, we all run the risk of being more fragile, more tempted to shut ourselves up in the loneliness of our own selfishness. This is why post-ideological societies are increasingly becoming "crowds of solitudes", in which people seek their own self-interest, defined according to an exclusively selfish and manipulative logic: faced with the vacuum of ultimate meaning, we grasp at penultimate concerns, and seek immediate possession.

[...] Yet, it is exactly this process which shows that we all need a common father-mother to free us from the confines of our selfishness, to offer a horizon for which to hope and love - not the claustrophobic, violent horizon of the ideologies, but one which truly frees all, and respects all. So if the "society without fathers" ran after the dream of emancipation, and to achieve this dream sought to destroy the father, it is precisely this bitter fruit of totalitarian and violent emancipation - and the vacuum it created - that evokes the newly felt need for a father-mother who welcomes us in freedom and love. This is certainly not to seek a father-mother whose place could be taken by the party, or the boss, or unquestioned leaders, or money, or capitalism; it is, rather, the longing for a father-mother who, at one and the same time, founds the dignity of each person, the freedom of all, and the meaning of life.

Eucharist

Rooted to my mouth the witch's tongue

now mine the hands of a priest

to cast a spell on coin of wheat
and raise to lips the cup fore-raised
to catch lifeblood from fallen Word;

in my body now a seed, a candle
amnesia could put out
and I the patient lover stand
outside the bridal bed
warmed soon by fallen Queen

All is Full of Love

You'll be given love
You'll be taken care of
You'll be given love
You have to trust it

Maybe not from the sources
You have poured yours
Maybe not from the directions
You are staring at

Twist your head around
It's all around you
All is full of love
All around you

What's a Gnostic Valentine's Day without love and androids?

Sorry Jeremy, I do realize you're an anti-Bjorkite.

On the Feast of St. Valentinus

While his wisdom mediates on the logos, and since his teaching expresses it, his gnosis has been revealed. His honor is a crown upon it. Since his joy agrees with it, his glory exalted it. It has revealed his image. It has obtained his rest. His love took bodily form around it. His trust embraced it. Thus the logos of the Father goes forth into the All, being the fruit of his heart and expression of his will. It supports the All. It chooses and also takes the form of the All, purifying it, and causing it to return to the Father and to the Mother, Jesus of the utmost sweetness. The Father opens his bosom, but his bosom is the Holy Spirit. He reveals his hidden self which is his son, so that through the compassion of the Father the Aeons may know him, end their wearying search for the Father and rest themselves in him, knowing that this is rest.

– Valentinus The Gospel of Truth

Low Hanging Fruit: Christianity, Satanism, and Thelema.

CAUTION: Long, personal and boring

Everybody comes from somewhere, especially me.

Despite our secular protestations, we live in an ambiently Christian culture. When I was a thirteen year old in Air Cadets (not for the militarism, but I was nuts about aviation and was comfortable enough in my dorkness not to be too offended by the dorkness-enhancing uniform) I went away for the summer to live in barracks and drill on a 104° parade square. After being issued ludicrously thick wool socks and the third worst haircut of my entire life, I lined up to be asked "Religion?" and informed there were three choices; Catholic, Protestant, or Jew.

Now bear in mind that this is in a country where the Head of State is also, in no uncertain terms, "Defender of the Faith" and the head of Church of England. So when that official 70s-era government form says "Protestant" it's not kidding around with kumbaya, "Good News" and sock puppets – it's talking about Anglicanism and the Archbishop of Canterbury and conventicles and croziers and canons and crumpets. So there I stand, in sweltering, teen-reeking green polyester in the desert sun, wondering where I fit in on this form.

Well I wasn't Jewish of course, but my grandmother was. Cockney Jewess, sound-of-Bow-bells; I was born with "the nose of my people" but didn't know Torah from tater tots. Catholic was out of the question: I briefly considered faking it but was sure there must be a secret handshake or something. Now I had been to enough "high church" Anglican to-dos to appreciate the accoustics, but really at the advanced sagacity of thirteen I knew that I was no Christian, at least not in the roll-away-the-stone miserable-sinner Hal-Lindseyite kinda way.

"Um," I stammerred with characteristic bravado and theological certainty. "I kinda get the immortality of the soul, and the difference between soul and spirit, but I think magic is real and not really a problem like it says in the bible. I mean, I've read the bible, but I don't see how you can confuse the parts about who begat whom with any kind of practical philosophy, and if you're just going to use mythology why not do something cooler like the Norse gods? Or the Greek Pantheon? I mean, if you think about Captain Marvel and the whole Shazam! thing and how he managed to blend all those god-powers into one word... and how really some of the Roman gods were invented to be rip offs of the Greek gods; like, if the gods were real, why would you have to invent copies of them? And anyway..."

To which the poor bastard of a corporal who pulled this particularly hellish duty of extracting a theological classification out of acned BO'd uniformed rejecteens interrupted, "Protestant" and checked off the appropriate box.

"Protestant" is the low-hanging fruit of North American culture. By "low hanging fruit" I mean you don't have to think about it too hard, you can identify with it pretty much by accident. If you are a spiritually-wired nine-year-old, the odds are overwhelming that you will read the bible – likely some truly ghastly modernist translation – and identify yourself as loving Jesus and wanting to be closer to Him. This is perfectly okay: Christianity is very digestible for nine-year-olds. It has nice easy answers, and is entirely binary. This is the right thing to do: telling the truth, helping your mum, doing your homework. This is the wrong thing to do: lying, shoplifting, masturbating. The world is rendered tidy and predictable as a cuckoo clock.

(This, by the way, was not my own low-hanging fruit. Mine was Spiritualism, ouija boards, reincarnation, and T. Lobsang Rampa.)

Now, if you're young and spiritual and smart, sometime around the age of twelve you start to realize that Christianity – and I mean here the puréed homogenized Christianity we hand to nine-year-olds – is ultimately a manipulative cartoon. But your world-view has been sufficiently framed so that your only real choices are either Satanism or Atheism. Despite how dead-end each of these paths may personally prove to be, each can occupy most of one's teen years while having the added benefit of freaking the everloving crap out of one's parents. Both of these options can be considered the low-hanging fruit of spiritual adolescence.

This is not to say that Christianity, or Satanism, or Atheism necessarily end there – just that as each of these are framed by the dominant Protestant paradigm of our culture in such a way as to appear pre-packaged and easily accessible. To adopt the first, one likely needs only an inclination, whereas the latter are both characterized as the "default rejection" of Christianity. Either way, you get to wear a lot of black and listen to bad music.

A few years on – bonus points if you're in university –, if you're young and spiritual and smart and nice, which is to say, tiring of the posey antagonism of Teen Satanism or Snotty Atheism, your low-hanging fruit is Neopaganism. You get issued an impressive pseudonym and an environmentally-fueled integrity that at least has a social benefit. While such a path can be a fully functioning religious experience, it is also very, very easy to digest. There are spellbooks on the shelves at WalMart.

At some point down this particular road you begin to wonder where all this stuff comes from, and it's pretty obvious that "pre-Christian surviving goddess religion of peaceful mystic nature-worshippers" is clearly not it. Even superficial research will show fairly quickly – for the young and spiritual and smart and nice and inquisitive – that Wicca is an expression of the Gnostic Restoration of the late 19th century. So what's the low-hanging fruit of Gnosticism?

Thelema.

I was ordained a Deacon in the OTO's Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica because I was seeking Doinel's church, and was told that it was Doinel's church. It resonated in me that he had in fact made contact with the intelligence of the Divine Feminine, and that his mission in the establishment of the EGC was authentic. I was told, and I think sincerely, that the OTO was in fact the valid inheritor of that mission. Well this of course was not the case: the Caliphate OTO is an entirely spontaneous 1970s invention with no ties whatsoever to the French Gnostic Tradition, neither the EGC or the later derivative EGU. Even today the Caliphate's claim to Apostolic Succession is spurious, based on an unauthorized and invalid consecration allegedly under the auspices of the EGCA, which that church denies.

But this was unknown to me when I left the OTO; it was important for me to keep my commitments to the EGC as best as I was able. I rejected the OTO "Gnostic Mass" as a later bastardization and derailing of what the pre-Crowley Church was trying to accomplish, and I connected and corresponded with other exiled non-Thelemite EGC Gnostics who shared my views. I'm not saying I didn't get a lot out of the work that I undertook within that Thelemic milieu, I'm just saying that for me, the purpose of my work had more to do with what the language of the ersatz-EGC merely echoed.

So do I think Thelema is Gnostic, despite the misleading claims of the Breeze/Scriven OTO, despite the personality cult of Crowley?

Yes I do. "Knowledge and Conversation with one's Holy Guardian Angel", the entire point of Thelema, is clearly a synonym for gnosis. Reuss' adoption of the titles of Doinel's church was not out of co-option but rather syncretic identification and empathy. In fact I would go so far to say that Thelema can only be understood in the context of the Gnostic Restoration: If early 20th century Thelemites didn't want to be seen in this light, why the incorporation of its myths, symbols, and language? If post-70s Thelemites don't want to be seen in this light, why seek the nod from EGCA lineage? I think it's safe to say that even if Thelema is not a part of contemporary Gnosticism, it's sure acted as though it wants to be.

At the same time I am in total agreement with +Hoeller, who says basically that what they are doing is not what we are doing. And that's fine. My point remains that where this leaves us is with many, perhaps thousands, of modern Gnostics who have passed through various forms of Christianity, Atheism, Satanism, and yes, even Thelema, on their way to placing their efforts and hope and roots in our Gnostic churches. We know, as evidenced by their contributions, that they've picked up a thing or two in their travels. And they are honoured and welcomed.

Now for a critical disclaimer: The Apostolic Johannite Church is in no way shape or form Thelemic, nor does it employ or refer to any Thelemic material or rites. Whatsoever. Not that I'd be inclined to do so, but we don't use any Thelemic liturgy at all. Ever.

But given that the AJC would welcome a reading from Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Rastafarian, Zoroastrian, Theosophical and even Golden Dawn tradition... would it be such a big deal if we did?

"Necessary and Urgent" to Criticise Islam

BERLIN (Reuters) - A Dutch politician and self-styled Muslim dissident urged Europeans to stand firm on Thursday in an international crisis over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, saying it was "necessary and urgent" to criticise Islam.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali praised newspapers in many countries which have printed the cartoons, considered blasphemous by many Muslims, but said others had held back for fear of criticising what she called "intolerant aspects of Islam".

[...] Asked about the threats to her life, she said: "I have a reasonable fear, yes, I have protection. But I also will not allow myself to be put in a state of fear that will lead me to panic or to silence."

–Reuters

I would also add that it is necessary and urgent to criticize the war in Iraq, the death penalty, abortion and its opponents, euthenasia and its opponents, liberalism, modernism, conservatism, medievalism, Israel, the Novus Ordo Mass, Tom Cruise, Members of Parliament, Bovine Growth Hormone, the Apostolic Johannite Church, the decline of the salad fork, and yours truly. This is what media is for, to challenge, examine, antagonize, reflect, inform, incite, provoke, and occasionally offend.

I personally feel that the Danish cartoons were tacky, racist, and pointless: more propaganda devoid of wit or substantive comment. But that says more about the cartoonists than the editors or readers. I tolerate in my mediasphere some of the most vile blather imaginable (FOX "news", the National Post), and all it does is paint the clowns more colourful that they may be identified from farther off.

Leucothea

All saints revile her, and all sober men
Ruled by the God Apollo's golden mean–
In scorn of which I sailed to find her
In distant regions likeliest to hold her
Whom I desired above all things to know,
Sister of the mirage and echo.

It was a virtue not to stay,
To go my headstrong and heroic way
Seeking her out at the volcano's head,
Among pack ice, or where the track had faded
Beyond the cavern of the seven sleepers:
Whose broad high brow was white as any leper's,
Whose eyes were blue, with rowan-berry lips,
With hair curled honey-coloured to white hips.

Green sap of Spring in the young wood a-stir
Will celebrate the Mountain Mother,
And every song-bird shout awhile for her;
But I am gifted, even in November
Rawest of seasons, with so huge a sense
Of her nakedly worn magnificence
I forget cruelty and past betrayal,
Careless of where the next bright bolt may fall.

– Robert Graves, The White Goddess

Nemesis

"He is divine not in his singular person, but only in his twinhood. As Osiris, the Spirit of the Waxing Year he is always jealous of his weird, Set, the Spirit of the Waning Year, and vice-versa; he cannot be both of them at once except by an intellectual effort that destroys his humanity, and this is the fundamental defect of the Apollonian or Jehovistic cult. Man is a demi-god: he always has either one foot or the other in the grave; woman is divine because she can keep both her feet always in the same place, whether in the sky, in the underworld, or on this earth. Man envies her and tells himself lies about his own completeness, and thereby makes himself miserable; because if he is divine she is not even a demi-goddess – she is a mere nymph and his love for her turns to scorn and hate.

"Woman worships the male infant, not the grown man: it is evidence of her deity, of man's dependence on her for life. She is passionately interested in grown men, however, because the love-hate that Osiris and Set feel for each other on her account is a tribute to her divinity. She tries to satisfy both, but can only do so by alternate murder, and man tries to regard this as evidence of her fundamental falsity, not of his own irreconcilable demands on her."

– Robert Graves, The White Goddess

Recently I have been meditating on the theme of nemesis; particularly in regards to the Logos. In Western myth, the archetypal hero – Osiris, Attis, Adonis – is typically accompanied by some kind of liminus, a character of both amplification and limit. The myth of The Temptation, of Jesus in the desert and his conversation with Satan, is an expression of this. As we reject this artefact of Christian juvenalia, do we run the risk of replacing it with a literalist Logos vs. Demiurgic face-off? Does the idea itself – objectivist good vs. evil in an eternal thumb-wrestle – seem as self-referential and false as the millennia-old rationalization of Christianity, pretending that it "all makes sense" vis a vis Aristotle? There is no Apollonian/Dionysian debate: Apollo is alphabetizing his recipe cards while Dionysis is getting drunk and crucified and coming back from the dead on the third day.

Okay, part of my reticence in examining this is that I'm wary of falling into – if not becoming – a dualistic cliché. Logos as "white hat", Rex as "black hat". (Yes, I call the mad, blind obscenity "Rex". Sit, Rex. Good boy.) The problem with all this characterization is that it's far too tempting to throw labels at ideas which cause one discomfort, and to fortify one's assumptions. Gnosticism has Logos, Protestants are of the Demiurge. Apple is of the Logos, Microsoft is Demiurgic. My Church is of the Logos – just look at us, gosh aren't we swell!

The purpose of all this myth stuff is to make our agon a little easier, to act as scaffolding as we build our own towers to Heaven. Problems invariably arise when we mistake the scaffolding for the tower, or as they say in my line of work, believing your own PR. Fundamentally, some myths are better – which is to say, more functional – than others. The mythic antagonism of Set/Wesir or Satan/Iesu (Hollywood always loves a remake) seems to have an interior resonance which, when externalized, becomes problematic if not entirely toxic. When we respond in such terms, we run the risk of becoming cartoon characters of ourselves.

I come to no conclusions about the inner realities of the myth at hand; the binary nature of masculine in divine archetype. I imagine you'd all be terribly impressed here if I did. But I have gained something from considering the context of this struggle/resolution; the context of the Holy Spirit. It is in Her that the antagonism is dissolved and resolved. Wisdom in Her love inspires both poles equally: meaning is not derived from victory of one argument over another, but rather in stepping back into the greater field of Sophia, of gnosis.

I Am But A Vessel Through Which God Drones On Indefinitely

Myself, I am but a humble servant, and have little need for the compulsory attentions of a captive audience. But the Lord our God, Light of the World, has asked that I pass his mind-numbing and unfathomable message on to the members of His flock, and I have answered Him yes. It is my God's infinite tedium, not mine, that I strive to share with you.

– The Onion

But the best line:

Verily, I am doing the Lord's droning.

Pure gold.

Why Isn't the AJC in Communion with the EG?

Because I get asked this a lot

Of Sacraments and Straw-Men

From Mark Bober's Illuminism:

"Many modern gnostics are having an identity crisis. While they claim to be gnostic they perform slightly altered versions of the Tridentine Mass used by the Roman Catholic Church prior to Vatican II. In fact one gnostic states emphatically on one website that his “Mass and other Sacraments resemble those of the orthodox churches in their style and form…” "

Not for the first time, Bober seems to have mistaken the cup for the wine. He has previously accused me - lil ole non-Christian me – of being a Valentinian-wannabe "because it is the easiest form to reconcile with their former Roman Catholic beliefs and its rites."

He seems to be making a set of assumptions here; that Contemporary Sacramental, Ecclesiastical Gnosticism (the EG and AJC) is, or wants to be "Valentinian". Quite plainly, we are not. The Valentinian cosmologies do not factor into the sacraments of these Churches.

He seems too to be claiming that we emphasize the sacraments instead of gnosis, which merely illustrates his ignorance in this regard. The sacraments serve to inform and amplifiy the spiritual journey of the Gnostic. The sacraments themselves do not bestow gnosis, nor is anyone claiming that they do. But to boil water, you have to contain it in a pot. A sacramental ecclesiastical structure is merely one form of container, wherein seekers may come and share and celebrate in hopes of kindling the light in others and in oneself – a process derided by Bober as "parasitic".

There is an unfortunate assumption here that somehow Roman Catholic orthodoxy originated sacramental theology, and that therefore the sacraments exist to further some kind of orthodox agenda. The reality is of course that baptism, matrimony, holy orders, and especially the eucharist predate Christianity by millennia. One could argue that civilization itself is defined by the point at which cultures adopt such sacraments. The pre-Christian sacramental experience is so similar to later Christian application that the orthodox explanation was that Satan has a time machine, and went back before Christ to introduce the myths and rituals to pre-Christians in order to confuse everybody later on.

The Roman Catholic Church is merely one caretaker of this sacramental experience, and the fact that modern Gnostics are as well does not imply that we are merely aping Rome. That Bober is ignorant of this is difficult to grasp, but it does appear to be the case.

I would invite Bober to employ a Gnostic approach to these sacraments – about how they contain and reveal a spark of the Divine in their participants. About the revelatory potential of symbolism and psychodrama. And perhaps something about babies and bathwater.

"If these neo-gnostic archbishops and bishops would just look into the history and doctrines of both Catholic and Gnostic movements they would come to a logical conclusion, the two ’schools’ of thought are antithetical to each other. The two basic goals of gnosticism and traditional or Pauline Christianity, are mutually exclusive let alone the problem of conflicting cosmologies and resultant theologies.

Let's leave aside for a moment the annoying and meaningless term "neo-gnostic", not to mention the odd idea that only clergy should explore this, and indeed look at the history. Yes, the canon of orthodoxy does exclude gnosis, and yes, the canon (insofar as there is one) of Gnosticism excludes, among other things, the exclusivity of Christ's gnosis, holding instead that is universally available and applicable.

There are indeed significant doctrinal differences between the two religions. In the immortal words of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; "Does the word 'duh' mean anything to you?"

But historical inspection also reveals a relationship between Christianity and Gnosticism that is, as I've said before, akin to that of strands in a braid. They often appear to wind in opposite directions, but nevertheless strengthen one another in a state of dynamic tension. Regardless, I find Bober's flavour of Christianity-bashing boorish and hypocritical. In its form, Bober's "Thomasine Church" resembles the multitude of indie Catholic churches, with it's vestments, titles, and sacraments - although with a more Assyrian flavour than Roman or Orthodox, but that's a stylistic distinction without a difference.

"The earliest Christian texts as recognized by most scholars are those of the school of St. Thomas."

Plainly and deliberately untrue. While there is much discussion regarding actual dates of extant versions, "most scholars" wouldn't come anywhere near this assertion – in fact "most scholars" dismiss Thomas as much later than the canonical gospels. Now, I think they're wrong about that, but that's "most scholars" for you.

He then goes off on a semantic tangent:

"Gnōsis is therefore a process within our own mind, not on some unverifiable spiritual dimension. Who we are and what we experience is done so through our own mind. [...] The problem arises for the neo-gnostic when they try to limit the definition of gnōsis as “divine knowledge.” "

His argument is a psychic one rather than pneumatic. We argue here of course one has intellectual knowledge, and knowledge of the Divine – and that virtually every religion makes a distinction between these two experiences. Yes, the word gnosis in and of itself does not make this distinction, but in the context of Gnostic scripture the meaning is clear. Despite Bober's assertions, gnosis is not merely an intellectual exercise.

"They also state that they acquire said knowledge through traditional Christian rituals."

As I stated above, nobody is claiming this. Nobody. Buber knows this, so why is he alleging it?

"Interestingly enough, many of them agree that one does not need outside assistance to achieve this kind of gnōsis. The question then arises as to why they need a church or ecclesiastical hierarchy if the path toward gnōsis cannot be imparted."

Because gnosis is not a cookie. I can't hand you enlightenment. Nor, might I add, can the ecclesiastical heirarchy of the Thomasine Church.

So what are we doing with this Church stuff? We are there to champion, to cheerlead, to honour, to invite, to listen, to create, to celebrate and to explore. What's the Thomasine Church doing? Handing out gnosis like tic-tacs?

As Msgr, Ken Madden+ recently explained, gnosis is what matters. Everything else is speculation. If you can find direct experiential awareness of the Divine by watching reruns of Gilligan's Island, so be it. So we can speculate together or apart; interpret collectively, or build straw-men out of one another's speculations.

Candlemas

Bride put her finger in the river
On the Feast Day of Bride
And away went the hatching mother of the cold.

 — Carmina Gadelica

She Tells Her Love

She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half-words whispered low:
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.

– Robert Graves

Both of these poems, one ancient, and one modern, speak of the binary facets of nature, and the gentle turning of winter into spring. Rather than stop there at the gates of simple seasonal truth (an hemispheric truth; a half-truth at best), these words invite us to welcome our own thaw – the frozen solidity of surety melting in the Light to the watery yield of gnosis.

Traditionally too this is the season of the Bride, the welcoming of Sophia into the Bridal Chamber. Each crocus and daffodil, every quietly triumphant snowdrop calls to Her; calls to the half-asleep-but-waking Wisdom in each of us.

Credo

"What makes us free is the gnosis
of who we were,
of what we have become;
of where we were,
of wherein we have been cast;
of whereto we speed,
of wherefrom we are redeemed;
of what birth truly is,
and of what rebirth truly is."

– Excerpta Ex Theodoto

Of the current creeds of the modern Ecclesiastical Gnostic liturgy, the Johannite Creed and the Ecclesia Gnostic Creed, I think this is an amazing third option, and my personal favourite.

WHAT MAKES US FREE IS THE GNOSIS

Redemption

"I am established. I am redeemed, and I redeem my soul from this aeon and from all that comes from it, in the name of IAO, who redeemed his soul unto the redemption in Christ, the living one."

– Valentinus

The Door, The Road

"Enlighten your mind... Light the lamp within you. Knock on yourself as if upon a door and walk upon yourself as upon a straight road. For if you walk on the road, it is impossible for you to go astray. Open the door for you so that you may know what it is."

– Silvanus

Gnostic Calendar Redux

My Gnostic Calendar just arrived from Fr. Troy, and it is gorgeous. It's already created a great speaking-point in the kitchen, where we've looked up certain Saints or noted personages. I also received the chequebook-sized pocket calendar, which is extremely handy. Go on, order one.

How Much Intolerance Can I Tolerate?

A fair bit, actually.

As some of you know, we had an election here and the ruling party mostly ran against itself (marred by a scandal affecting the previous government in '99, and by largely boring the country with the most successful economic performance in its history, and a Prime Minister who grumpily refused to ride jetskis to press conferences). The other party ran against being bored by the ruling party, and um, against successful economic performance. Anyway the other guys won, albeit with a tiny minority government that will keep them, in the words of one Conservative Party adviser, "from galloping off into some blue-eyed Aryan hinterland." A telling quote from one of their own, because in a very real sense this was an election about whether or not tolerance should continue to be an integral part of the Canadian identity.

It's not the Conservatives that I fear, not the old Joe Clark ones anyway. There is nothing wrong with old-school Canadian Conservatives: in fact I miss them and wish they'd come back. Curt has an excellent post on what this is supposed to be about. But a few years ago in order to keep the right vote from splitting they merged with a Reagan-era party that was dedicated to sideburns, the death penalty, tractors, lynching queers, denying the holocaust, and rounding up brown people who talk funny. And in the words of one no-doubt-recently-unemployed copywriter; "I am not making this up." The inclusion of white-supremicist elements and sympathizers is referred to among our new Tory overlords as "big tent politics". So what we're left with is a distinctly un-Canadian-Conservatism – in its place is a political Frankenstein that looks a lot like US Republicanism. Which of course has done just peachy things for America.

The first lamb up for slaughter is whether or not some 2 or so million Canadian citizens can have the same rights as the other 28 or so million. The new government will argue that this is not the case, but fortunately they don't have the votes. So despite the governments desire for intolerance, it looks like we still have a tolerant country.

I don't really want to make this about the election, because I'm not that upset about it. The Tories ran an effective, coherent campaign and were democratically elected. Congratulations. Vox populi, vox Dei. Democracy is mob rule with table manners, and I like it that way.

I'd rather talk about tolerance, about how it's about to become both an increasingly endangered and vilified thing. Those of us who consider tolerance a value – a mechanism on the way to acceptance – have a particular responsibility to be faithful to it, and often we fail in this duty. More of that in a minute.

The right is correct in one ongoing assumption: that the center is intolerant of intolerance. And I think they are also correct in categorizing this stance as unfair.

We have "hate speech" laws in my country – fairly slippery and unenforceable, but laws nonetheless. I do not have the right to say publicly that Jews use time-machines to control earthquakes, or that Hindus eat babies, or that gays are pedophiles. Now there are contexts in which this is legally permissable: the privacy of one's home, in church, at a party.

Certain Catholic elements have characterized this as outlawing Christianity: if you can't condemn gays (or Jews or vegetarians or whoever our next contestant may be) in public, then you're not preaching the basic tenets of the religion, and therefore it's an unfair restriction. It's all an elaborate plot to turn us all in multiculturalist hemp-wearing Trudeaubots.

And I think they're right.

Now I understand the rationale for hate speech laws; it's about violence. If a Klan rally posits that immigrants or Jews are the problem, it's meant to incite violence. And it often works. Likewise when a Roman Catholic Bishop writes a letter telling people to use "coercion" – violence or the threat of violence – against gays, things are going to get ugly (although any member of the clergy advocating violence is pretty ugly in my opinion, but that's just me).

We have necessary laws restricting freedom of expression; military intelligence, criminal investigations under way, protecting the identity of minors, issues concerning privacy, slander, as well as things like bomb threats. But is "hate speech" the same as a bomb-threat? Honestly, I don't think so. I am confident that people can judge for themselves; if my neighbour sends me a letter saying there are too many Asians in my community, I can judge that this person is a racist. From that, I can draw my own conclusions, and I hardly need to call the RCMP. We already have effective laws against issuing threats, and if he crosses that line then that's another matter entirely. I personally adhere to the position that we as a society are proven by how we treat those with whom we disagree.

We don't throw them in jail. We don't tell them what they can or can't think or say or publish. But we don't tell them who they can and can't marry, either. We don't go out of our way to deny them Charter rights. And we're not supposed to campaign on the promise that we're going to make things miserable for some of us.

We small-l liberals hold to a number of values that have been vilified by the right: tolerance being the most spat upon, but others – diversity, environmental responsibility, democracy, social justice, the value of art and education – are equally derided by the current ambient conservatism. In fact these same values are typified as "totalitarianism" because liberals see these as universal ideals. But totalitarianism is of course something entirely other: a desire and practice to enforce uniformity in thought, speech, behaviour. Anything outside this norm is not to be tolerated. Liberalism doesn't hold to this, and in fact there is nothing more antithetical to totalitarianism than liberalism. The logic of the right goes; if diversity and tolerance is the new norm, then this is conformity; therefore conformity is the new non-conformity, and liberals are hypocrites because we won't conform to the new non-conformists. So you're a totalitarian if you expect others to reject totalitarianism. I remember how this goes; ignorance is strength, right?

So, regarding totalitarianism; if the liberal/conservative continuum has any meaning in this context, I think it results from examining these questions;

Which is more likely to shut down an art gallery?

Which is more likely to stop a book at the border?

Which is more likely to ban a TV commercial?

Which is more likely to push for a boycott of an entire roster of TV advertisers over content of a single episode?

Which is more likely to vandalize a church door?

So here's the deal: I will hold to my unpopular tolerance. You can open any kind of church next door, read any kind of newspaper, paint any art, write any poem; even if it is about evil time-travelling earthquake-causing Jews or baby-eating vegetarians. You can define your family any damn way you choose, and I won't stop or lobby to have you stopped or vote for those who vow to stop you. Where you've felt in the past that we liberals were trying to stop you from blaming everything on gays, I apologize, and we shouldn't have done that. You go right ahead.

I will also vow to move beyond tolerance to acceptance, to find common ground in our humanity, in our democracy, and in our compassion.

A Brief Introduction to the AJC in BC

Once again, Father Troy has done all my work for me. So, what he said, only change the names to protect the plagiarists.

These bits are absolutely spot-on:

Liturgy as Poetry
In the Gnostic view liturgy is poetry, not theology. The same is true for scripture generally, including the scriptural passages that are read during the Eucharist service. The words are not statements of belief—they are not there as an end, but as a means. No belief is required to participate, and unexamined beliefs are actively discouraged in our tradition.

[...]
Under: Am I a Gnostic?
Not everyone who benefits from our tradition, or Gnosticism in general, is a Gnostic. Gnosticism accepts our experiences, it recognizes the presence of the Divine in everyone, it is poetic and symbolic while being practical. In a world that most often misuses our spiritual impulses, Gnosticism offers a means of following them to liberation.

A key difference is that someone who is not a Gnostic, but uses material from Gnosticism, tends to get stuck on the ideas. They may use them for liberation, but only to a point. For example, the Divine experienced as feminine is a continuous part of the Gnostic tradition, but it is not the point of it. If contemporary women find this aspect of the tradition useful in overcoming the limitations of society, it has served well, but if the process of liberation stops there—it is not Gnosticism.

LifeSite: Harry Potter = Gnosticism

Okay it's an amusing story, that some Pagans open a Hogwarts Wannabe in Edmonton (with a 2 year diploma program – won't that wow them on the resumé! The HR folks at Subway are going to be delighted, I'm sure), but what's interesting to me is that TradCath LifeSite has decided that this event is proof of the Great Gnostic Conspiracy™

It would seem there is truth to the warnings against the Harry Potter series if the opening of an honest-to-goodness witchcraft school in Canada is any indication of increased interest in the occult that has resulted from the books.

The new school, Northern Star College of Mystical Studies, is compared to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from the Harry Potter books by a CanWest News Service report. The school offers diploma and two-year certificate programs, open to adults only. The school teaches potions, astrology, tarot, hypnotherapy, divination, magic and other occult practices, among other subjects. [...]

Both O’Brien and Father Alfonso Aguilar meanwhile condemn the books for their similarities with an early anti-Christian cult known as Gnosticism. “The wizard world is about the pursuit of power and esoteric knowledge, and in this sense it is a modern representation of a branch of ancient Gnosticism, the cult that came close to undermining Christianity at its birth,” O’Brien explained in his essay, Harry Potter and the Paganization of Children's Culture

“The so-called ‘Christian Gnostics’ of the 2nd century were in no way Christian, for they attempted to neutralize the meaning of the Incarnation and to distort the concept of salvation along traditional Gnostic lines: man saves himself by obtaining secret knowledge and power,” O’Brien wrote.

Defending his criticism of Rowling’s work as compared to JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, who some argue also portrays magic, O’Brien added: “Rowling portrays Harry’s victory as the fruit of esoteric knowledge and power. This is Gnosticism."

–Terry Vanderheyden, LifeSite

Does raise an interesting point though: Does Hermeticism = Gnosticism? Now, I see Hm as a subset of Gn;, one certainly does not need to accept the existence of Hermes Trimegistus in order to be Gnostic. But there is an undeniable continuity between Hermetic cosmology and Gnostic cosmology. I wholly accept Poimandres as a quintessentially Gnostic text.

I also find it delightful that I can find something illuminating, even on a mean-spirited, frequently racist Rant-o-gram like LifeSite.

Zoe and Bios

Robin Hood and Maid Marian. Well, also them.
There's an interesting Greek idea buried in the two words for life: βιοσ and ζοε. Bios is the individual life, your biography, an instance or specific example of a bigger idea. That greater theme is zoe, like zoology, a story writ in entire species.

This is very telling about the nature of myth, which many people misunderstand. The common take is that there's an event, something happens, and the story grows in the telling. "There really was a King Arthur, a Lancelot, a Camelot, and the details just got layered on and confused over time". But of course myth doesn't work this way at all.

We carry in each of us an archetypal story, a well of imagery and narrative, which whirls and eddies around half-facts of historical events and people. Once energized by myth, entire groups of people, even cities, become distilled into characters in fables – but the myth always predates whatever half-understood history to which the legend becomes, eventually, attributed. Two thousand years from now, I imagine people will claim anachronistically that the bios of Jesse James was the historic reality behind the zoe of the Robin Hood legends. It's just never that convenient, and it's misleading to assume the "reality behind the legend" mechanism. Which is why those who pour over archaeological data looking for Jesus or Mary Magdalene will always come away empty handed.

The bios of the Magdalene is familiar; her exorcism, the annointing, her care for the slain Christ, her exclamation at the tomb, and much later traditions of flight to France and her life in the cave. But she can be seen against the great zoe of myth – that of the Sophia, the Goddess of Wisdom who is the Holy Spirit and Bride of the Fallen Word. Here we see the bios of the Magdalene stepping into the zoe of the Divine feminine, one woman's narrative entering the realm of myth. One time, one place, becomes all time and all places – most importantly, the here and now. The Magdalene stands before us as a kind of invitation; to remember the Bride as well as the Bridegroom; to honour the sacred feminine in the Bridal Chamber of reunion; to restore Sophia, the Lost Queen, to her rightful place as the Holy Spirit.

At the still point of the turning world

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

– ts eliot Burnt Norton

Some Thoughts on Gnosticism and Abortion

- Some Gnostic sects supported contraception, and possibly the use of non-surgical abortifacents. While attributed to the idea that we're "world haters" and don't want to bring children into the world (a typically Jesus-is-coming-look-busy Pauline idea if ever there was one), it more likely had to do with the prominence of women's roles within early Gnostic communities, and a hands-off out of respect for women's domain.

- Contemporary Gnosticism, unlike say Roman Catholicism, is not in the social engineering business. The thing about social engineering is that it is only capable of seeing humanity as a mechanism in social policy; there is no room for individuals, and certainly compassion, in such a model. This is not a criticism: we don't have 1.3 billion person-bloc to think about, so we can think about people and their challenges one at a time.

- Last year a Canadian med student was refused graduation because he refused to perform an abortion on religious grounds. While I respect his conviction, should we likewise graduate Jehova's Witness Physicians if they refuse to perform blood transfusions? This is an honest question.

- Like most people, I don't trust any source that identifies itself as "pro-life" (stupid term, attempts to portray those of differing opinions as "anti-life") or "pro-choice" (stupid term, attempts to portray those of differing opinions as "anti-choice").

- Also, like most North Americans, I am what the anti-choicers sneeringly call a POB ("personally opposed, but") and the anti-lifers call an SLR ("safe, legal, and rare").

- I think we have to reject the premise of both camps: human life, guys, does NOT begin at conception. It's a stupid premise. Maybe – just maybe – there's a case for a green light at implantation. You're just never going to convince reasonable people that two cells equals baby. The other thing about this particular camp is their strange bedfellows: Those opposed to abortion invariably apply the same sociopolitical mechanisms of death-penalty advocates, anti-immigrant forces, leftbehindist rapture-waiters and gun freaks.

- We must likewise reject the idea that a seven month old foetus is not a human being. I mean, c'mon. It's got all the bits. Thinks, feels, cries, gets hiccups, sucks thumb. You pop that lil sprog out and put it in the arms of anybody and the response will be "Awww... cute widdle baby!". And aside from that last litmus test, the same thing applies at five months, at four months. And with not a whole helluvalotta imagination, at three months.

- What will happen as the technology improves to the point where, say, a week 6 embryo is "viable" in an incubator? What is our responsibility then? Again, honest question.

- So somewhere between say week 1 and week 12, we get a human life, and once we have that, we have something very, very important. At week 10, you have all the bits: organs, eyelashes, fingerprints, toenails, not to mention senses, pain receptors, and a dreaming mind. So the temptation is to want to outlaw, ban, and otherwise forbid abortion after this critical milestone. The reality is of course that literally 90% of all abortions take place before then. And honestly, I don't have too much of a problem with this – I'm not saying it's not a very big deal, a human tragedy, or an easy decision. But before this point in development, to my mind the tragedy is for the woman. Only 10% happen after the ten week mark, with the numbers diminishing rapidly through the second trimester.

- Here's a thing we know: abortion has been with us for a very, very long time. During the overwhelming majority of this time, and throughout the world, it has been illegal. So we know that outlawing abortion will not make it go away. Banning week 6 abortions is going to create a lot more week 14 abortions. Beware of simplistic answers to complex questions. And that's just it, isn't it? It is a complex question. You can't pretend that a week 3 miscarriage is the same as a week 12 miscarriage. You can't pretend that a 14 year old scared witless at an unwanted pregnancy is having the same experience as a 35 year old woman facing her fifth child, or a 42 year old woman facing sobering triple test results. Yes, there are very, very few women on their sixth abortion who see it as a no-big-deal means of birth control, and no amount of clinic blockades will make a damn bit of difference to the conscience of this infinitesimal constituency.

- Here's another thing we know: in those societies where sex education is early and comprehensive, and access to contraception is easy, the abortion rate is much, much lower than in societies which attempt to contain these two ingredients. "Liberal" western nations have lower abortion rates than "Conservative" western nations, largely because abortion is predominantly an economic decision, and conservative economic policies always, always result in an increase in the number of poor women and a decrease in education levels (someone once said that cruelty is the last conservative virtue – a tad extreme, but it's pretty basic math that conservative = suffering). Now, it would seem simple enough: increase education and access to contraception, and you decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies. Problem solved, right?

- Again, beware of simple answers to complex questions. There is an inevitable price to thinking of babies, or protobabies, or even sperm and ova as semi-disposeable. Some little brainworm has wiggled its way into our culture, about the right of choice of those with power over those without – it's not a huge stretch to see the rise in abortion in western countries connected to the rise of homelessness, to the commodification of human genes, and future bioethical entanglements about cloning and personhood. Sex and power have always been and always will be terribly complicated aspects of messy humanity.

- So as Gnostics, as champions of our own autonomy, integrity and responsibility, what's the stand to take? Our antinomianism renders the entire issue of legislation irrelevant (legal schmegal). It's not about what someone else will or won't allow us to do, it's about taking action which reflects our own understanding, our own gnosis. And it's also about allowing room for the human story, about compassion, about comfort in the face of misfortune. It's also critical to see our attachments how this very primal issue is being played and manipulated by archonic forces, right and left. The reflex to dehumanize those on the other side of a debate, to chant and to pontificate and think in slogans in place of the messy, multidimensional complexities of human circumstance – well it is just this sort of thinking that they need to keep us in the Black Iron Prison. It is easier for the Archons to rule over tee-shirts than the sparks of the Divine we truly are.

Almost I fear to think how glad I am

Almost I fear to think how glad I am . . . Standing on bare ground, – my head in the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space, – all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing, I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image of the Divine

Cruelty has a human heart,

And Jealousy a human face;

Terror the human form divine,

And secrecy the human dress.

The human dress is forged iron,

The human form a fiery forge,

The human face a furnace seal'd,

The human heart its hungry gorge

–William Blake

A Priest Walks Into A Bar: Dialogues

The other night was the installation of a new WM at wonderful Victoria Columbia Lodge #1, chartered in 1858. The building is exactly what you get when a bunch of 19th Century millionaires decide to make a space for ritual and symbolism. The banquet was quite toney, with the men all a-penguined and the women sparkly as the bystanders of the Linda Evans Wardrobe Trailer Explosion of 1982. I of course went in drag (that's Priest-speak for clerical attire), and met up with a few friends from the local tattoo shop who were having their staff bash at a seedy bar immediately after the shindig. So a Priest walks into a bar...

Bar Girl: So, are you a real fucken Priest?

Me: We don't usually phrase it that way.

Later...

Very Wasted and Scary Armed Forces Sniper on Leave from Afghanistan: You a real fucken Priest?

Me: Turns out.

VWASAFSOLFA: S'all bullshit.

Me: I'm sorry?

VWASAFSOLFA: S'all bullshit. I don't believe in anything.

Me: Me either. You're right, it's all bullshit.

VWASAFSOLFA: Huh. Well you're a Priest...

Me: Right. It's not about what you believe, it's about what's real, and where you put your life; magic, art, joy, charity, sex, truth, beauty. Rising above the bullshit. Getting PAST the fact that it's all bullshit. Who you are. What you do about it.

VWASAFSOLFA: Huh. [pauses] Huh. Y'all right. S'good. That's cool. [turns to buddy] This guy's cool. THIS GUY!... IS COOL. Awright...

Epiphany: Meet the New Boss

Epiphany, Eric Gill

Epiphany, in the Western Tradition is an adoption from the East; it represents in its origins either the nativity or the Baptism (as it was to the Basilideans) or the visitation of the magi. It gives us an opportunity, as Gnostics, to reflect on the relationship of these three ideas, in that they each reflect a birth; washing away the blood of the Mother, welcoming the new person to the world.

It is a presentation, a revelation of sorts; here is the new Kingship – the old order is overthrown, and a new system is in place. For us, it means recognizing that what we have seen has profoundly altered who we have become, and there is a deliberate choice to defer the old, horizontal self to the Kingship of the new, vertical Self.

Epiphany, for us, is also a step of the Gnostic Road. Many if not most contemporary Gnostics confuse an epiphanic event with gnosis; it is like entering the darkness of the Platonic cave, and discovering a flashlight. Epiphany is turning on the light and holding it up to your eyesocket; discovering in fact that light exists where darkness once was. But epiphany is not gnosis. You're not yet using the light to look around the cave and find a way out. Knowing that something is wrong, seeing the Archons for who they are and waking up to the Black Iron Prison; this is not gnosis either. Now, at this point, you're one up; you're aware of the existence of light, but you still can't see anything. As Fr. Troy pointed out recently, confusing epiphany with gnosis satisfies the Ego, and leads to inflation. "Hey, I found a flashlight! I have all the answers! Now I can go back to watching Desperate Housewives, only with my new shiny "I have attained Gnosis" badge. I wonder if they've tapped my phone?"

It seems to be one of those "by their fruits" things; the by-product of epiphany is largely paranoia, whereas the by-product of gnosis is calm.

But neither of these is Charis.

Many blessings,

Father Jordan.

New Mass Space

We have a new Mass space! Regina Coeli Parish of the Apostolic Johannite Church will be conducting a Gnostic Mass the third Wednesday of each month at 6:00 PM, at the First Unitarian Church of Victoria, 5575 West Saanich Rd. Next Mass is the 18th of January. This third Wednesday thing puts us in sync with St. Joseph's in Calgary, just for fun.

The Truth Centre, our previous hosts, made more money by booking recitals and rehearsal space for the Victoria Conservatory of Music, and letting us know at the last possible moment.

This is a bit of a homecoming for me, as I used to attend this very church; there's a labrynth we can walk before Mass to enter into a space of stillness, and there are deer who routinely walk up to the windows to see what's going on.

Gnostic Calendar

The Gnostic Calendar is now available, in both wall and pocket versions. A huge thank you to Father Troy+ (keeper of the indispensible online calendar for years) for his efforts, and his ecumenism: the calendar includes EG and AJC feast days. Click here to order yours.

Gnostic Elves?

Gnosis* in Elvish
Elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo
In honour of the birthday of JRR Tolkien I thought I'd share with you my rationale for stating that his Elves are Gnostic. I am not questioning Professor Tolkien's Catholicism, merely stating that in his efforts in creating a language he furnished its imaginary speakers with a myth and a world-view which to my mind is decidedly in keeping with Gnosticism.

From the AINULINDALË:

There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made.

So we have the Pleroma and emanations/Aeons ("offspring of his thought" ...)

To Melkor among the Ainur had been given the greatest gifts of power and knowledge, and he had a share in all the gifts of his brethren. He had gone often alone into the void places seeking the Imperishable Flame; for desire grew hot within him to bring into Being things of his own, and it seemed to him that Ilúvatar took no thought for the Void, and he was impatient of its emptiness. Yet he found not the Fire, for it is with Ilúvatar. But being alone he had begun to conceive thoughts of his own unlike those of his brethren.

Some of these thoughts he now wove into his music, and straightway discord arose about him, and many that sang nigh him grew despondent, and their thought was disturbed and their music faltered; but some began to attune their music to his rather than to the thought which they had at first. Then the discord of Melkor spread ever wider, and the melodies which had been heard before foundered in a sea of turbulent sound.

Enter the Demiurge, motivated by jealousy, inserting his own malevolent will into Creation.

From the VALAQUENTA:

The Great among these spirits the Elves name the Valar, the Powers of Arda, and Men have often called them gods. The Lords of the Valar are seven;

Like the Seven Archons over the earth, the klimax heptapulos.

Like the Cathars, the Elves fight "the long defeat"; their inevitable passing from a world in which they are strangers – with a reverent yet detached stewardship – to their true home on a distant shore. And given their talents for magic and alchemy (and their taste in Art Nouveau) I think we can count the Quende as part of our own. Happy Birthday, Professor!

A ná merye i turuhalmeri ar alya i vinya loa! Namárie, tenn' enomentielva.
*Here I've rendered the Greek word in Elvish script, the actual Quenya equivalent is "istya".

The Solemnity of the Holy Mother of God

For much of the world's population, Mary serves as the personification of the Divine Feminine. She stands as the not only the Mother of God, but as the Mother of us all, just as the masks of Aset and Inanna and Asherah were once worn by the Magna Mater. Here She is crowned Regina Coeli, girdled with the Knot of Isis, and presented as Venus on a crescent moon. How fitting that we begin the New Year in Her honour, as it is our Mother who encourages (literally "fills with heart") all our beginnings.

We take this day to reflect and renew our commitment to peace and mercy throughout the world; to our stewardship of the earth, and our championship of those suffering injustice.

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.
Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui.

A Gnostic Aesthetic?

O ye, all ye that walk in the Willow wood, Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh, 1902

Like all of you I wear, and have worn, many hats. In a past life I was a design history teacher at a community college; I can draw a straight line from William Morris through Mackintosh and Bauhaus to Arne Jacobsen and Martha Stewart, of all people. I know the distinction between Art Deco and Art Nouveau is not nearly so delineated as it is taken to be, and can discuss how Charles and Ray Eames invented the set of Bewitched, and hence all of post-War America. I can (and have) talked about the joys of steamed plywood for two hours solid. And as much as I appreciate the antiseptic 70's airport lounge that is our contemporary landscape, what my soul needs is brocades, velvets, stained glass and tasteful ornament; not in the fussy clutter of Victorianism, but rather in the reassuring beams of low Wright ceilings and sinuous leafy curves of Arts and Crafts pottery.

The aesthetic of Gnosticism has been, predominantly, pushed in two directions; the dusty papyrus and scratchy pseudocalligraphy of bad type, and the LSD-fuelled blacklight horrors of PKD covers. How shameful a visual poverty for what is truly the Artist's Religion? Much of this of course is a result of modern Gnostics coming in from the cold of fringey occult movements, whose iconography is universally hideous. Also to blame are those who discover Gnosticism in an academic context; having no credible commercial objective academic publishers have half-heartedly plunked shots of decaying codices on the cover. There has been little exposure to art and design which can evoke the texture and richness of the experience of gnosis.

The Restoration, occurring as it did in 1890's France, happened in a resplendent artistic context; art of this period is imaginative, romantic, holy, languid yet vital, disturbing, beautiful, decadent, entrancing, fluid, mystical, resonant, mythical, literary, sensual, audacious, both natural and supernatural, subtle, and transcendent. I'm speaking of course of Symbolism, a movement encompassing visual arts, typography, dance, and even early cinema, the movement's roots being in the earlier (and more familiar) Grail imagery of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Let us find, therefore, our visual voice in Art Nouveau typography, in the works of Moreau, Rossetti, Mucha (an occultist and freemason who would approve), Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh (see her "May Queen" in the masthead above), deviant weirdo Aubrey Beardsley, and the Elves from Lord of the Rings (who are so Gnostic, but that's another post) – and let us be no more at the mercy of the colour-blind vandals at Vintage Paperbacks.

Gotta Love Conservatives

FORBIDDEN VACCINE: Ever year, about 500,000 women throughout the world develop cervical cancer. In the United States alone, the disease kills about 3,700 women annually. This year, scientists developed a vaccine against human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted disease that is the primary cause of cervical cancer. The vaccine produced 100 percent immunity in the 6,000 women who received it as part of a multinational trial. As soon as the vaccine is licensed, some health officials say, it should be administered to all girls at age 12. But the Family Research Council and other social conservative groups vowed to fight that plan, even though it could virtually eliminate cervical cancer. Vaccinating girls against a sexually transmitted disease, they say, would reduce their incentive to abstain from premarital sex.

– While You Were Sleeping.

The Crystal Cabinet

The Maiden caught me in the wild,
Where I was dancing merrily;
She put me into her Cabinet,
And lock'd me up with a golden key.

This cabinet is form'd of gold
And pearl and crystal shining bright,
And within it opens into a world
And a little lovely moony night.

Another England there I saw
Another London with its Tower,
Another Thames and other hills,
And another pleasant Surrey bower.

Another Maiden like herself,
Translucent, lovely, shining clear,
Threefold each in the other clos'd
O, what a pleasant trembling fear!

O, what a smile! a threefold smile
Fill'd me, that like a flame I burn'd;
I bent to kiss the lovely Maid,
And found a threefold kiss return'd.

I strove to seize the inmost form
With ardor fierce and hands of flame,
But burst the Crystal Cabinet,
And like a weeping Babe became-

A weeping Babe upon the wild,
And weeping Woman pale reclin'd,
And in the outward air again,
I fill'd with woes the passing wind.

– William Blake, The Crystal Cabinet

This is a gorgeous exploration of the Shekhinah, of being in the Presence of the Divine Feminine, and the poverty of its loss. The Maiden here is the Triple Goddess, of threefold smile and threefold kiss. The poem speaks to the prismatic quality of such an experience; how She opens us up to parallel, multiple realities which are of course fragile – it is the desire to seize and possess such an experience that makes it elusive, that shatters the cabinet.

Feast of St. John the Apostle

"We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us. God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him"

– 1 John 4:16

Oprahphobia

What keeps me up at night is that we will keep writing and publishing and (G@d forbid) evangelizing until we reach such a critical mass of popular curiosity that Deepak Chopra writes a book on Gnosticism and talks about it on Oprah.

Within months there will be Gnostic Aromatherapy candles at Crate and Barrel.

Fringe Protestant churches will use Gnostic texts to vilify Rome; identifying Gnostic Christianity – or more specifically their Christianity with a newly-bolted-on Gnostic label, as the One True Faith stolen by evil Romans (thereby justifying the Reformation in advance). There will be "Gnostic" Christian rock bands, playing to youth ministries at big-screen-TV megachurches.

"Jesus was a Gnostic!" people will insist over lattés at the mall, "and so were the Apostles!" (who of course in this interpretation are always actually historical people and never personifications of ideas). One literalist pseudohistory will be eclipsed, momentarily, by another literalist pseudohistory, only with the new one decked out in Valentinian cosmologies and quoting The Gospel of Philip.

Don't think this isn't coming.

What will be lost in this barrage of newage (rhymes with sewage) Protestant brand of Gnosticism, is our ability to resolve paradoxes. We don't create our own reality (who'd create cholera, if given the choice?), but of course we create our own reality (where does the kosmos originate if not in us, in our complicity?). The Demiurge is other but of course he's us. Christ is the Logos, external and immortal, but of course Christ is the mantle of our annointed Self. Myth is ancient and cultural but of course it's present and personal. The Pleroma is the Father, just not as you have been raised to understand the idea, Sophia is The Goddess, just not in the way that a Llewellyn paperback understands Her.

What drove early Christians nuts about us is that we agreed with everything. Pick a topic. Virgin birth? Check. Transubstantiation? Right on. Incarnation and Resurrection? Gotcha. We just didn't meant these things the same way Christians meant – and mean – these things. We're slippery that way.

It came up the other day that Valentinus quoted the forgeries that are Paul's "Pastorals" (which have as much to do with Paul as my grocery list) – even though these were deliberately counterfeited to denounce Gnostic influences on emerging Christian theology. Well, I think that Gnostics can find meaning encoded in a knock-knock joke or a washing-machine repair manual; such is the gift of inhabiting a spiritual space derived from metaphor, from applicability, from "this is not this but this is like this". Our language is not prose but poetry, both found and composed.

In this aspect the heresiologists are correct; Gnosticism is elitist. Not everybody is comfortable outside the superficially stable parameters of literalism and Aristotle. Sure, okay, we're adolescent posey anti-authoritarian beatniks, and yes, we're cooler than you. And yes, selling the equivalen of black turtlenecks and bongos at WalMart does in fact infringe on my pneuma-hipster cachet. I never claimed to be mature about this. But that's my problem. I'll get over it.

What we must remember is that the Divine so often conceals itself in the discarded. G@d in the Gutter. And what could be a better model of trash than disposable contemporary culture? It is ironic and of course archonically inevitable that the signal of Gnosticism should be co-opted by the noise of Rex Mundi. Nice one, Rex.

And yet it will blow over and people will set aside The Gospel of Mary next to their rear-view-mirror angels, their Da Vinci Code Air Fresheners and their chakra crystals. Gnostic scripture will once again be rejected and declared worthless; those who hunger for saccharine bromides will binge and purge and move on, having looked but not seen. And we will take such crude efforts at commodification, and with wit and irony we will culture-jam and recompose, remix, edit and mashup to celebrate the story sleeping beneath the plastic.

And we will still be here. Gnosis will still be here. Wisdom will have hid herself in the world, sending signals to those who love Her and remember to listen.

Hanukah

בס"ד

Hanukah Woodcut, 1727

"All the darkness cannot extinguish the light of a single candle, yet one candle can illuminate all the darkness."

– Traditional Talmudic Proverb

Many bright wishes and love to our Jewish family and friends! Remember, that without Judaism, there would be no Gnosticism (and as one loudmouth heretic priest once said, "the big problem with Gnosticism is that it's not Jewish enough").

Now if you'll excuse me I have latkes to make...

Nativity

This in my inbox this morning from Bishop +Rosamonde;

Pay attention now to exactly where the birth of nothingness takes place.  This eternal birth (of God) takes place in the soul in the manner that takes place in eternity.
 
There is only one birth – and this birth takes place in the being and in the core of the soul.  This birth takes place in darkness.  And not only is the Son of the heavenly Creator born in this darkness - but you, too, are born there as a child of the same heavenly Creator.  And the Creator extends the same power to you out of the divine maternity bed located in the Godhead to eternally give birth.  The seed of God is in us. 
 
Now the seed of a pear tree grows into a pear tree; and the seed of a hazel tree grows into a hazel tree; a seed of God grows into God. 
 
What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself?
 
And what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace?  What good is to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture?
 
This, then, is the fullness of time: when the Son of God is begotten in us. 
 
We are all meant to be mothers of God.

– Meister Johannes Eckhart
13th Century Dominican mystic

How perfect for this Feast of the Incarnation. Thank you Rosamonde!

I would like to extend warmest Christmas blessings to you all, particularly Bishop +Shaun McCann, Monsignor Ken Madden+, Bishop +Rosamonde Miller, Bishop +Gerald del Campo, Father Troy Pierce+, Rev. Terje Bergersen, Stu Berry, the brave souls of the RGIA pilot program who were handed an unannounced and unexpected hiatus due to family, career, and manuscript; the wonderful contributors of the Logosphere – "Straight A" Jesse, Jeremy (who's upcoming book on Thomas is the best yet written, period), Pauline, Jane, Scott and all who tend the grounds of the Palm Tree Garden; to the commentors on my blog, especially those who correct my ceaseless errors and acts of hubris (supporters are easy to come by; smart critics are more precious than gold: that's a shout out to you, Curt and Doug); to all of you and your families –

Bright Blessings and much joy.

Mithras Eve

He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation.

– Mithraic altar inscription

Pardon the pun. But I do find it valuable at this time to remember that the stories that hold us together, that we honour and incorporate, are as old as we are human. Lux ex tenebris. The Gathering of the Newborn Light. This to my mind does not make Christmas less special, it makes it timeless, universal. It is important to remember that our culture is syncretic - it values reinterpretation, innovative and personal retellings. The story itself transcends cultures, timelines, geographies; not because the story is fickle, but because it is real.

The Feast of Judas Thomas, the Divine Twin

And Thomas answered, "Therefore I say to you, that those who speak about things that are invisible and difficult to explain are like those who shoot their arrows at a target at night. To be sure, they shoot their arrows as anyone would - since they shoot at the target - but it is not visible. Yet when the light comes forth and hides the darkness, then the work of each will appear. And you, our light, enlighten."

The Soter said, "It is in light that light exists."

Thomas, spoke, saying, "Why does this visible light that shines on behalf of men rise and set?"

The Soter said, "O blessed Thomas, of course this visible light shines on your behalf – not in order that you remain here, but rather that you might come forth."

– The Book of Thomas the Contender

And Yet...

There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling,
Whether as learned bard or gifted child;
To it all lines or lesser gauds belong
That startle with their shining
Such common stories as they stray into.

Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues,
Or strange beasts that beset you,
Of birds that croak at you the Triple will?
Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turns
Below the Boreal Crown,
Prison to all true kings that ever reigned?

Water to water, ark again to ark,
From woman back to woman:
So each new victim treads unfalteringly
The never altered circuit of his fate,
Bringing twelve peers as witness
Both to his starry rise and starry fall.

Or is it of the Virgin's silver beauty,
All fish below the thighs?
She in her left hand bears a leafy quince;
When, with her right hand she crooks a finger, smiling,
How many the King hold back?
Royally then he barters life for love.

Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,
Whose coils contain the ocean,
Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,
Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,
Battles three days and nights,
To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore?

Much snow if falling, winds roar hollowly,
The owl hoots from the elder,
Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup:
Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.
The log groans and confesses:
There is one story and one story only.

Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,
Do not forget what flowers
The great boar trampled down in ivy time.
Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,
Her sea-blue eyes were wild
But nothing promised that is not performed.

– Robert Graves, To Juan at Winter Solstice

The Long Night

And longer still the night, the dark is rising against us. Winter's bones know nothing of the warm flesh of summer, surely there can be no Spring. The light is overthrown, and we are undone.

What faint hope can we have against such a tide? How vain we are to think, at this chill hour, that we are not abandoned, that Sun will be restored to His throne? The stars are arrow-heads aglint in a night sky under whose cold it is death to sleep.

No, clearly the Light has no love for such as me.

No person have I touched I have not in some way poisoned with my selfishness and need. Every thought has been to vanity, every action dedicated first to animal impulse, and second to my own absurd aggrandizement. When I have been offered love I have contained it, criticized it, trivialized it. My praises of the Divine are adolescent and snide, every attainment due only to a callous skill at insinuating myself next to those with greater talent and greater heart. I ape philosophy like a drunk quoting Shakespeare. Where is the Sun for me? Away in disgust at my co-option of the language of goodness while revelling in my own prideful idiocy.

If Advent is to prepare for the coming of the Light, then in this, as in all things, have I failed. The wave of dark will surge and break over me, and day will fall away altogether.

ORA PRO NOBIS

Litmus Test 1.0 beta

There has been a tremendous amount of recent effort dedicated to the definitions of gnosis and Gnosticism - much of it to counter what can only be described as the most disastrous and irresponsible scholarship on the subject. Williams has declared that we simply don't exist and never did, and Voegelin has us defined as everybody who ever hated anything so much they wanted to make the world a better place, just like Communism and Nazism. Oy.

Regardless of those who declare that ancient and contemporary Gnosticism have nothing in common, we have the people, these Greek-speaking Jews in Egypt in 200 BC, telling these stories, asking these questions. Such questions and stories are valid, integral. Their symbolism and paths greatly influenced early Christianity, and not just as a defining negative. These people sought gnosis, attained it, centralized it. Their language is our language, their stories our stories. The historical reality of these people will not go away just because Williams finds their existence inconvenient.

There is a very real and historic continuity between our syncretizing Alexandrian friends and the early Christian church, and via the Johannite current to the Bogomils and Cathars. Gnosticism adapts, evolves, reinterprets, reimagines. Denying that contemporary Gnosticism is part of the ancient Gnostic religion is akin to saying that modern Jews aren't Jews. These assertions are not only intellectually dishonest, they are deliberately insulting.

Gnosticism is a religion. It is not an "approach" to religious ideas, and it is most definitely not a branch of Protestant Christianity. So let's get on with the definitions;

gnosis; (Gk. γνοσισ, "knowledge") profound insight, complete awareness, enlightenment. Contrast with episteme; working knowledge or familiarity. Synonymous with satori in Zen.

And really, we're done here. There is no "human gnosis" vs. "divine gnosis". No local or cultural gnosis. The gnosis of the Sufi is not different from the gnosis of the Alexandrian or the Inuit.

Gnosticism; a pre-Christian syncretic religion centered around the salvific nature of gnosis, emphasizing imagination, integrity, non-ordinary ways of seeing ("mysticism") and personal responsibility.

What is still missing is a litmus test; a set of criteria against which we may objectively place the Sethians, the Quakers, the Borborites and Ophites and Cainites and Bogomils.

Jesse and I were discussing this the other night, and this is what we came up with;

1) Soteriology: Gnosticism holds that gnosis is salvific, or necessary for the redemption of the human experience - in fact is central to such a process (in other words, gnosis as one of several qualities doesn't count).

2) Pre-existence: Gnosticism holds that what makes us us exists before our physical incarnation. Our origins are therefore not on earth but in the Pleroma.

3) Archons/Aeons: whether literally or figuratively, Gnosticism understands that there exists a heirarchy of forces governing the kosmos - different traditions state that these are in turn harmful, beneficial, or neutral, but each tradition maintains that such forces negotiate in their own interest, rather than ours.

4) Progressions of human awareness: that people are of different natures; for example, one model sees humans as hylic (worldly), psychic (intellectual) or pneumatic (spiritual), with these being "evolutionary" steps. Other progressive models qualify equally.

I would posit that a score of three out of four qualifies the candidate as belonging to the Gnostic religion, or at least warranting further clarification. Kabalah and Sufism, for example, pass the test: each of these contributed greatly to Gnostic thought and history, but are of course aspects of distinct, non-Gnostic religions. But all in all I'm confident that the test does get us further along. Bishop Hoeller has stated that one acquires a "musical ear" for Gnosticism, and I agree wholeheartedly, but this presents I fear too great a challenge for academe.

Academics are going to struggle for generations reconciling the reality of the Gnosticism above with the spurious definitions (or anti-definitions) of Williams and Voegelin. And it can't be done. Were I to publish (to critical acclaim) that a penguin is a mammal, the field of zoology would itself be compromised, the efforts of successive ornithologists greatly hampered. Only through the application of common sense and historical reality can we hope to soften the blow somewhat.

Jesse's post on the same subject is available here.

Philip Kindred Dick 1928-1982

Today is the birthday of Philip K Dick, author, Gnostic, and inadvertent founder of Phildickian Gnosticism.

His basic theme – that divinity is to be found in trash, in the rejected stone, and in the disposability of popular culture – played out in his own life, where epiphany was found via the jewelry of a drugstore delivery girl, and gnosis through a psychotic break (or via a pink laser fired from a satellite of extraterrestrial origin, take your pick). Through the examination of his agon and his naked honesty, Dick is the St. John of the Cross of our age, the corpus of his work a postmodern Dark Night of the Soul.

He is most popularly known as the writer of the novels which inspired the films Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly and Paycheck, although his opus, the four volume VALIS, The Divine Invasion, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer and Radio Free Albemuth has yet to make the transition to screen. His stories – often uncomfortable to read yet endlessly compelling – explore blatant Gnostic themes of identity and memory, of reality and deception, of humanity and redemption.

His Burroughs-esque Exegesis has yet to be published in its entirety, but it illustrates a brilliant and intuitive mind, sensitized both to the zeitgeist of his agon and its timelessness.

The Path of Gnosis

Jeremy brought my attention to a new Gnostic blog, EG Priest Father Troy Pierce+ in Salt Lake City.

It has been through Fr. Troy's+ efforts that we (and I mean the greater Gnostic Ecclesia) enjoy the EG Liturgical Calendar online, and I'm looking forward to the pocket version which should be available shortly.

Troy+ has some very insightful entries posted, and I look forward to his further contributions.

Anglicanism and Gnosticism

I continue to be fascinated by the ecclesiastical challenges of North American Anglicans, both within the ACC and ECUSA. The critical, conservative minority continually – and with no modicum of malice – levels of a charge of "Gnosticism" against the progressive theology of Bishops such as +Spong and +Griswold, and even those who are at least willing to consider Anglican Christianity as anything other than exclusive, fundamentalist, and literalist.

What the critics are attempting to imply, of course, is that one cannot be both Gnostic and Christian, that Christianity in and of itself is antithetical to the Gnostic world view and practice. Now, I maintain in this that they are demonstrably and manifestly mistaken. I believe I have some credibility in this issue as I am not a Christian defending my Christianity, and my right to it. I am a Gnostic Priest who ministers to those who self-identify with a broad range of religious traditions, with the majority of these considering themselves Christian.

However, the critics also imply that such values as tolerance, innovation in interpretation, and compassion are Gnostic, and in these assertions they are much closer to the truth. So instead of dismissing the conservative voices as merely intellectually dishonest and homophobic, let us look at some of the evidence before us.

What follows is a "spine" of theology by +John Shelby Spong, and it does seem to me to have profoundly Gnostic elements, in its rejection of third-party literalism and its emphasis on individual respect.

The 12 Theses of +John Shelby Spong

1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.

2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.

3. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.

4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.

5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.

6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.

7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.

8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.

9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.

10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.

11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.

12. All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

Readers may also wish to check out The Koinonia Statement.

As a long time admirer of +Spong and +James Pike, I can certainly empathize with those who likewise see strains of Gnostic thought within the theological work of the contemporary Anglican Episcopate – although where we differ greatly is that I see this as being a valuable contribution to the Christian tradition and an honouring the thinkers of the early Church.

What I would love to see - and what I perceive as the ultimate trajectory of +Spong's work – is for a contemporary, compassionate Christianity to take its rightful place in the continuum of the ancient Eucharistic Religion of the Incarnation, dating back countless millennia. Christianity is merely the caretaker of the deeper liturgical tradition which predates the Christian myth.

And my ego is sufficiently large and voracious enough to wonder one day if I shall be credited with coining the term cryptognosticism to describe the mystics and theological pioneers of ECUSA and the ACC.

Narnia Targeted To Christians

The film adaptation of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the first installment of the Chronicles Of Narnia series, is being marketed strongly to a Christian audience. What do you think?

Marta Osburn,
Travel Agent
"Do they realize this movie is all about people coming out of closets?"

Harry Sousa,
Solderer
"It's high time we Christians fought back against those Hollywood elitists with our own movie about sorcery and witchcraft."

– The Onion

Mission Accomplished

Once he was a man like most others – a worldly man, seduced and jaded by material things.  But then , after a tragic accident, Stephen Strange discovered a separate reality, a higher plane of occult forces in eternal conflict.  Vowing to be Earth's first line of defense against magical menace, the erstwhile hero became Earth's foremost Master of the Mystic Arts!

Z and I were Christmas shopping and I came across a Dr. Strange action figure. I picked it up, the 8 year old in me going "Wow!", and I told her that when I was a kid I wanted to be Dr. Strange.

She replied, "Well, you can cross that one off your list. Mission Accomplished."

Violet Firth 1890 - 1946

Today is the birthday of Violet Firth, better know as Dion Fortune, the Gnostic, occultist, author, and psychotherapist.

"To say that a thing is imaginary is not to dispose of it in the realm of mind, for the imagination, or the image making faculty, is a very important part of our mental functioning. An image formed by the imagination is a reality from the point of view of psychology; it is quite true that it has no physical existence, but are we going to limit reality to that which is material? We shall be far out of our reckoning if we do, for mental images are potent things, and although they do not actually exist on the physical plane, they influence it far more than most people suspect."

Forune's symbol-rich novels The Goat Foot God, The Winged Bull, and The Sea Priestess stand both as guilty pleasures and serious testaments to the power of the invoked imagination, More information available at The Society of the Inner Light.

EGINA Reader Map

This is a map of the 100 readers this blog welcomed on Saturday. Mauritius! Singapore, North Korea! The green dots represent the last 10 readers at the time of generating the map. I also take great pleasure in the fact that I can identify some of these dots as people whom I have befriended despite not yet having met. I was interviewed about a dozen years ago on the impact of the internet on minority religions, and I made some comment about "the only Rastafarian in Moose Jaw", about how the 'net was making geographic isolation surmountable for religious communities, particularly those on the fringes of society, such as Baha'i in the Islamic world.

When I look at an excellent resource such as The Palm Tree Garden, or reply to the thrice-weekly plea "Where can I find a Gnostic near me?" I am grateful for the connections that the gnostiblogosphere has afforded us.

Is God a Person?

Let me begin by saying I don't believe in atheists. This is not to say that I do not personally subscribe to atheism, which I do not, but rather that I do not believe that there are any real atheists. I certainly have met a few individuals claiming to be same, but I have also met individuals who have confessed with utmost sincerity to being from outer space.

The conversation usually goes like this:

Self-Proclaimed Atheist: I'm an atheist.
Me: What do you mean by that?
SPA: Well, I don't believe in God.
Me: So what do you believe in?
SPA: Well, goodness, being kind. Love. Personal responsibility.
Me: So, no intangibles? Synchronicity? Non-local phenomenon? Intuition? Divinity?
SPA: Well sure, but not, you know, GOD god, like in the Bible.
Me: How about God in the Bhagvad Gita?
SPA: Well, that's cool, sure, I mean, God as a seven-headed cobra and stuff, with an elephant head. But not really, not, y'know, the guy on the throne with the white beard keeping track of every time you pick your nose or whatever.
Me: So, how about the Force, in Star Wars? An impersonal connecting quality, like nature only transcending time and space?
SPA: Sure, I believe in that. Or maybe the Goddess, that seems cool too.
Me: Sounds like God to me.
SPA: Sure, just not the old dude in the Bible.

Busted, you self-contradicting self-proclaimed atheists! The big remaining question is: who would believe in the old dude from the Bible? If God is in fact a transcendent Force – the existence of which is easier to prove than to disprove –, a process rather than a person, what is that old dude doing there, anyway?

The Thomist definition of a "person" is "an individuated substance with reason". An amoeba would qualify if it could think, and not just think like a hamster, running mazes and dreaming of fresh straw, but actually reasoning and pondering the nature of existence. Cogito ergo sum.

So, can you individuate the substance of God? Can you take "the Force" out of the equation and set it aside and ask it questions? I don't think so. As I understand it, the Divine is a relationship both within and without existence. In this view I am a panentheist.

The word "person" properly denotes a characterization, a mask rather than the wearer. It's a very different idea from the vernacular use of the word (kind of like the disastrous differences in the scientific and mundane use of the word "theory"), in which "person" essentially is taken to mean "some guy".

In Gnosticism, the idea that the Divine is "some guy" is considered idolatrous if not blasphemous. Where Gnostic texts deal with the subject, there's usually a kind of respectful abstraction, a tradition identical to the Hermetic. The Light. Understanding. An Abiding Presence Demanding Awe. The Divine is just too big to fit into one Personality. In fact when a Divine Personality does emerge in Gnostic literature, it is characterized by its flaws and failures, from Wisdom Herself to the Mad Scientist that is Her bastard offspring – the same Mad Scientist who is associated with the "bearded old dude", whom Blake referred to disparagingly as "Old Nobodaddy". God as "some guy" gives us the heebie jeebies.

The Gnostic application of the Trinity – three Person with one underlying reality – refers more to the Greek idea, that of masks. At some point talking about the great intangible godhead begins to generate diminishing returns; we need a scaffolding of sorts to reflect on our encounters with the constructs of God. So we have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, or the Pleroma (Fullness), the Logos (Word), and the Pneuma Hagion (the Holy Spirit who is Sophia, and the Shekhina). But these are visible expressions of the wake of the Divine rather than the Ultimate Holy Hoo-Ha itself, like concentric ripples from a stone in the water, but not the stone per se.

The Kemetic religion, which is my current favourite nominee for the ur-religion of the West and the origin specifically of Gnosticism, viewed the Divine as similarly vast, although the "names" or expressions of god are numerous, mercurial and fickle. These Netjeru (names), whether Isis or Anubis or Set or Hathor (or more properly, Aset, Yinepu, Set or Het-hert) are all facets of one gem, one big, BIG godhead. Many people are disoriented upon the discovery that ancient Egypt was, in a manner, monotheistic.

A similar challenge is easily overcome in a modern Christian church – one sees a vine, a lamb, an infant, a man, and a suffering convict, each of whom represent an aspect of one single character. The Jesus story would suffer greatly were we to exclude all but say the child of the manger, even though the complete story could be told using that one περσονα as a starting point. We impoverish the story with such single-minded exclusion, just as we do when we culturally see the Divine in "his" guise as the Architect, an omniscient, judging Santa Claus of a person.

Ironically it is the richness and multiplicity of symbol, of metaphor, that presents us with a way out of obsessive idolatry. Give me my burning bush, my dove, my tetragrammaton, my oroboros, my olive branch and wreath of laurel. Each of these are in a way a person, a mask of God, concealing as much as they reveal. Putting all our eggs in one basket, iconically speaking, results in just the kind of idolatry that the iconoclasm of Judaism, for example, was designed to overcome. I find both options equally fitting, and equally practical; the diversity of symbolism coexisting with the inexact and deliberately intangible language of Hermetic abstraction.

More Blakey Goodness

Not one but two recommendations within two hours for this book, one from Bishop Rosamonde (EGM) and the other from Father Troy( EG). Looks like I'll be ordering this one first.

I have tremendous regard for Dr. Singer, her death last year was a great loss to the community, and I deeply regret never having met her. Her "Gnostic Book of Hours" has over the years been a great consolation to me, and was my first exposure to the Hymn of the Pearl, which is among my favourites of the Gnostic Gospels.

A Call For a Blake Year

Today is the (unofficial) Feast Day of (unofficial St.) William Blake, the late 18th century poet, artist, Gnostic, and civil rights supporter.

He is perhaps best known to high-school lit survivors as the author of one of the great anthems of the Incarnation, Jerusalem, on the legend that Joseph of Arimethea brought Christ to England as a child;

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire.

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

Blake is our hero, our voice, our champion in the advocacy for Imagination. I am calling for a Blake Year, a commitment by the greater Gnostic ecclesia to read, debate, and exegesize, to dig deep into our richest cultural resource. Let us build a Jerusalem of insight among the dark mills of chattering blogs. Who's with me?

Advent: The Holly King and the Oak King

In Celtic mythology, Midwinter represents the victory of the bright Oak King over that of the dark Holly King. The night of Midwinter represents the pinnacle of the Holly King's power, and each subsequent night gives incremental way to the sun's ascendance. Thus is the year divided; the tides of Holly and Oak, ebb and flow, wax and wane.

This division is echoed in the western Liturgical Year; Easter and Advent, the Ascent and the Incarnation. Culturally, Advent (could) protect us from the premature onslaught of Christmas. It serves to separate our thinking and our spiritual "space" from the rest of the year with a simple and profound message; the Light is coming. Brace yourself.

Of course the Light is here, the Light is always here. But as we benefit from the Rituals of the Incarnation, Yule and Hannukah and Christmas, so to do we benefit from a deliberate and mindful preparation. What of the year do we carry forward, and what is best left behind? It's not a question of "Jesus is coming, look busy" but rather a line that invites us to cross it. Advent offers us a valuable interstitial season, a period of reflection and setting aside. All the baking and shopping and decorating, and our cultural impulse to do so, I think has less to do with a response to a commercial imperative than with an instinctual understanding that winter changes us, that there is a promise of Light in the Darkness, and that to perceive that is both a gift and a miracle. And we want to be ready, as we should.

Apocatastasis Revisited

We are stardust
We are golden
We are caught in the devil's bargain
And we've got to get ourselves
back to the garden...

After considerable reflection on this issue, I returned to the event of my own gnosis in the summer of 1986. Restless and unable to sleep, I went for a midnight walk along Sunset Beach in Vancouver. I remember the reflection of the stars on the water, people crabbing in the gentle Pacific surf, trousers rolled like eliot. A large heron, alighting to the grey sand, glided past my head, wingtip missing by millimetres. And in that sound that was not a sound, more a simple compression of warm night air, I heard the Voice of the Divine, and I knew. For me it was Basho's frog, or the clack of a broom against a wooden chair. I heard the tumblers of the universe roll and click into place.

What I knew in that moment is the suddenness, the immediacy of magic in the world; constant, present, incessant, infinite and luminous.

Of course we are all reconciled with the Divine, of course we are all reunited with the Pleroma – we none of us have ever left the Father, the Fullness. Our anxiety, our separation, is merely dokos, the veil of deception that is the kosmic work of archonic forces. The Kingdom of God is within you.. Lift a stone and I am there; split a piece of wood and you will find Me there. The moving power of Gnosticism has always been the freedom – the artist's freedom, the lovers' freedom, the freedom of rebels and heretics – that derives from such intimate insight; perhaps epiphany is realizing that something is wrong, whereas gnosis is understanding that something is entirely right.

Crisis in the Anglican Communion: A Lesson for Gnosticism?

Is there a lesson for Ecclesiastical Gnosticism in the current conflict within the Anglican Communion? The world's third largest Christian denomination is facing very real schism between the evangelical, literalist, conservative "Global South" and the liberal, inclusive majority within both the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church USA. The conservatives are well funded and have vocal supporters in North America, many of whom have joined archconservative schism-oriented groups such as the ACN and CANA. Interestingly, the Pareto Principle is at work: 20% of the Anglicans worldwide (North America) control 80% of the money. If there is to be a split, we will see two very, very different churches emerge; one very dogmatic, Nicene, and Lutheran/Calvinist (Robert Duncan-ism), the other existing-Western-Anglicanism embracing a kind of compassionate crypto-Gnosticism (JS Spong-ism). The conflict is heartbreaking, with much hyperbole and stone-throwing and it saddens me greatly – and I'm just an outside observer. But millions of people are showing up each week to figure out all this spirituality and religion stuff, and instead they get this.

At the center of the conflict is the issue of gay rights.

That, at least, is the stone in the water; the concentric issues are actually more interesting (to me, anyway; gay rights is a given). The big question at play seems to be praying next to someone who disagrees with you. For the most part, the liberals are willing to share a Church with the conservatives, all the while hoping that they will choose a more compassionate position, whereas the conservatives are calling for the liberals to pick up that vinyl-floppy book in front of them and read the thing, even the dull bits. Repent, or we're outta here.

Now it would seem that we as Gnostics would not be so vulnerable for two reasons;

1) The issue of gender and orientation are not relevant to gnosis; unlike Christians we hold to the pre-existence of the soul, and are therefore not defined by our bodies. Therefore neither gender nor orientation are a bar to the Gnostic Sacraments of baptism, confirmation, eucharist, matrimony, orders, penance, or unction.

While it is not unthinkable that "a" Gnostic Church would bar someone from the sacraments based on gender or orientation (the French Gnostics didn't ordain women until the 70s, and there was much conflict and schism) such a Church could not do so as a Gnostic Church, but only by employing Christian tradition, proof texts etc. In other words, a Gnostic Christian objecting to ordination of gay clergy or marriage could not honestly do so as a Gnostic, but might genuinely do so as a Christian. That may seem tricky, but remember that Gnostic Christians are both, not neither.

2) Scripture is not held in Gnosticism to be inerrant but rather inspirational. As a general rule we make no distinction between the insight gained from The Gospel of Philip and that from Leaves of Grass. You can generally tell a Gnostic that Leviticus says x is a stoning offense, and Timothy says so too, and you're likely to be told Leviticus objects to shrimp cocktail and reminded that Timothy is a blatant forgery.

And yet.

Because individuals define Gnosticism in their own way – one could argue that it is the individual's responsibility to do so – there is a tremendous amount on nuance and discrepancy even within these two basic assumptions. What that results in is this: I am not a Christian, nor do I believe in an historical Jesus. I also do not believe in reincarnation as it is commonly understood, nor do I believe that anybody named Thomas had anything whatsoever to do with The Gospel of Thomas. And yet all of these are minority opinions within our tiny, tiny little religious community. And I would not hesitate for a moment to practice my religion in the same service, the same room, the same Church, with someone who held all those points to being a core of their religious identity. Further, I'd be very surprised to find a Gnostic unwilling to take communion with me on the grounds that we differ on those or other core issues: Gnosticism is about being integral to your own gnosis. Once you have that kind of clarity, one is not easily threatened by views which may seem at first examination to contradict one's own. In fact such debate and exploration is, in the overwhelming majority of cases, not only welcomed but sought.

There is, however, a tragic external force at play: the divisive "culture war" in which we are out-hated and woefully outgunned. Individuals in regions traditionally conservative face intense pressure daily to acquiesce to ambient homophobia and xenophobia. For those walking the already precarious line that is Gnostic Christianity, the temptation to succumb to ubiquitous opinion on gays, immigration, censorship, Islam, must be both staggering and exhausting, and I imagine one must often feel compelled to choose between a "Christianity of the heart" and the Christianity of the pulpit, the Christianity of history. While I imagine I would choose to stand for my own integrity, could I fault myself for falling into the judgmental certainties of prevailing culture?

Apocatastasis

"Of what a nature is the resurrection! And the image must rise again through the image. The bridegroom and the image must enter through the image into the truth, which is the apocatastasis."

– The Gospel of Philip

Apocatastasis: Restoration.

This was an interesting idea in theology, the idea of universal salvation; that at some point everything will be reconciled with the Divine. I have been doing rather a lot of prayer and reflection on this topic recently, focussing on the following questions;

Is this a Gnostic idea?
Certainly the Gnostic authors of Philip thought so.

If gnosis is critical for salvation (from ignorance), do all ultimately attain gnosis?
Obviously the complement arises: if those without gnosis are saved, then gnosis is not in fact necessary for salvation.

And if all do not ultimately attain gnosis, does this mean that those who do not are not saved?
Well obviously. Just drawing out the logic here.

We do not have the "out" of literalist reincarnation available to Buddhism and Hinduism; the idea of reincarnation is a little to "convenient" and doesn't allow for the non-linear nature of time, and smacks of speciational and societal chauvinism (It's always "I was a farmer in 17th century Ireland", never "I was a ground squirrel in Saskatoon in the thirties"). Therefore we do not literally see those who die in ignorance stepping back on the wheel to try again. And given that gnosis requires the capacity for critical reflection, what of those who die in infancy?

And if all can not attain gnosis, say, for example, the mentally disabled, asthmatics, or the Dutch, and therefore they are not saved, does this make Gnosticism elitist?

Could such elitism erode compassion, and our obligation to compassion?

And of course, if gnosis is not in fact necessary for salvation from ignorance and restoration with the Pleroma, then what is it for?

In Christianity, apocatastasis is more commonly known as universalism, and is a heresy. After all, if all are saved anyway, what's with all this Church stuff? The very idea is bad for business. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.

The brilliant Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, while admitting that doctrine was doctrine, held out hope for universal salvation. He found solace in Hegelian dialectics, which basically states said that everything outside God is a problem, therefore all our thoughts are flawed anyway, so what do we know? Certainty has uncertainty in its DNA. Balthasar hoped that the redemptive statements in the Christian Gospels would serve to counteract the various decrees of eternal damnation; and felt that it was one's compassionate duty to do so. His position is thoroughly bludgeoned by uncharitable orthodoxy, however, which clearly states that hoping the Church might be wrong about something is pretty much drilling holes in the boat.

My entire line of questioning stems from an assumption that the fundamental role of gnosis is soteriological; as though gnosis were a train ticket, no fare, no ride. Perhaps a better line of inquiry stems from identifying gnosis itself with apocatastasis: real enlightenment is reconciliation with the Divine.

Clearly calls for more research, and reflection. Damn my lack of education!

Update
This came to me last night: my instinct agrees with considerable chunks of Gnostic Scripture, that upon death all are reunited with the Divine. So perhaps that gnosis is the only way – or maybe jus a way – to experience such reunion while still alive. My thinking here is fuzzy, but at least my gut is getting a compass reading.

So, When Are You Going To Make Bishop? Update

Upon reflection you're all right and I was wrong. "Creepy" was an inappropriate and disrespectful term, and I've removed it from the post with my sincere apologies to Bishop +Hoeller and my sisters and brothers in the EG. I was concerned about the criticism (not my own) of Ecclesia Gnostica, for which I have enourmous respect, and felt that such criticism could be easily addressed. My word choice was juvenile, and I am sorry.

J+

Prisoner of Narnia: CS Lewis in the New Yorker

I grew up with Lewis, of course, although he made nowhere near the impact on my young imagination that Tolkien, or even Lucas, did. I do look with amusement at how the Cath Traddies have canonized the kinky old bastard, seeing as his theology was shallow to the point of trite, his imagery vastly more Pagan than Christian, and his repeated rejection and distrust of Catholicism.

I think they like him because he was vocal opposition to an atheistic materialism which, quite frankly, came down with the Berlin Wall but neglected to mention its extinction to the tweedy Chesterton-worshipping "evil empire" Traddies of today. I do respect that he embraced and centralized what he called his Joy – his own gnosis, and his sense of the Mystery. I eagerly await the film and shall no doubt go all fanboy on you on its release.

A lengthy snip from the article here:

[Fantasy] evoked in Lewis an emotion bigger than mere pleasure—a kind of shining sense of goodness and romance and light. Lewis called this emotion, simply, the “Joy.” With it came the feeling that both the world and the words were trying to tell him something—not just that there is something good out there but that there is something big out there. [...] The Christianity he knew in childhood, by contrast, seemed the opposite of magic and joy: dull sermons and dry moral equations to be solved. [...] A bright and sensitive British boy turned by public-school sadism into a warped, morbid, stammering sexual pervert. It sounds like the usual story. What was special about Lewis was that, throughout it all, he kept an inner life. Joy kept him alive—and it is possible that the absence of happiness allowed an access of joy. [...]

It was through the intervention of the secretive and personally troubled Tolkien, however, that Lewis finally made the turn toward orthodox Christianity. In company with another friend, they took a long, and now famous, walk, on an autumn night in 1931, pacing and arguing from early evening to early morning. Tolkien was a genuinely eccentric character—in college, the inventor of Lothlorien played the part of the humorless pedant—who had been ready to convert Lewis for several years. Lewis was certainly ripe to be converted. The liberal humanism in which he had been raised as a thinker had come to seem far too narrowly Philistine and materialist to account for the intimations of transcendence that came to him on country walks and in pages of poetry. Tolkien, seizing on this vulnerability, said that the obvious-seeming distinction that Lewis made between myth and fact—between intimations of timeless joy and belief in a historically based religion—was a false one. Language, and the consciousness it reflected, was intrinsically magical. One had to become religious to save the magic, not to be saved from it. (It was, ironically, the same spirit in which the children of the nineteen-sixties felt that the liberal humanism in which they had been raised failed to account for the intensities of another kind of trip—and that led them, too, to magic, and to Lewis and Tolkien.) All existence, Tolkien insisted on that night ramble, was intrinsically mythical; the stars were the fires of gods if you chose to see them that way, just as the world was the stories you made up from it. If you were drawn to myth at all, as Lewis was, then you ought to accept the Christian myth just as you accepted the lovely Northern ones. By the end of the walk, Lewis was, or was about to become, a churchgoer.

This was a new turn in the history of religious conversion. Where for millennia the cutting edge of faith had been the difference between pagan myth and Christian revelation, Lewis was drawn in by the likeness of the Christian revelation to pagan myth. Even Victorian conversions came, in the classic Augustinian manner, out of an overwhelming sense of sin. Cardinal Manning agonized over eating too much cake, and was eventually drawn to the Church of Rome to keep himself from doing it again. Lewis didn’t embrace Christianity because he had eaten too much cake; he embraced it because he thought that it would keep the cake coming, that the Anglican Church was God’s own bakery. “The story of Christ is simply a true myth,” he says he discovered that night, “a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened.”

It seemed like an odd kind of conversion to other people then, and it still does. It is perfectly possible, after all, to have a rich romantic and imaginative view of existence—to believe that the world is not exhausted by our physical descriptions of it, that the stories we make up about the world are an important part of the life of that world—without becoming an Anglican. In fact, it seems much easier to believe in the power of the Romantic numinous if you do not take a controversial incident in Jewish religious history as the pivot point of all existence, and a still more controversial one in British royal history as the pivot point of your daily practice. Converted to faith as the means of joy, however, Lewis never stops to ask very hard why this faith rather than some other. His favorite argument for the truth of Christianity is that either Jesus had to be crazy to say the things he did or what he said must be true, and since he doesn’t sound like someone who is crazy, he must be right. [...]

Lewis insists that the Anglican creed isn’t one spiritual path among others but the single cosmic truth that extends from the farthest reach of the universe to the house next door. He is never troubled by the funny coincidence that this one staggering cosmic truth also happens to be the established religion of his own tribe, supported by every institution of the state, and reinforced by the university he works in, the “God-fearing and God-sustaining University of Oxford,” as Gladstone called it. But perhaps his leap from myth to Christian faith wasn’t a leap at all, more of a standing hop in place. Many of the elements that make Christianity numinous for Lewis are the pagan mythological elements that it long ago absorbed from its pre-Christian sources. His Christianity is local, English and Irish and Northern. Even Roman Catholicism remained alien to him, a fact that Tolkien much resented. [...]

He writes, instead, as real writers must, a real book for a circle of readers large and small, and the result is a fairy tale that includes, encyclopedically, everything he feels most passionate about: the nature of redemption, the problem of pain, the Passion and the Resurrection, all set in his favored mystical English winter-and-spring landscape. Had he tried for less, the books would not have lasted so long. The trouble was that though he could encompass his obsessions, he could not entirely surrender to his imagination. The emotional power of the book, as every sensitive child has known, diminishes as the religious part intensifies. The most explicitly religious part of his myth is the most strenuously, and the least successfully, allegorized. Aslan the lion, the Christ symbol, who has exasperated generations of freethinking parents and delighted generations of worried Anglicans, is, after all, a very weird symbol for that famous carpenter’s son—not just an un-Christian but in many ways an anti-Christian figure. [...]

The talking animals who live in Narnia wait desperately for the return of Aslan, the lion-king, who might restore their freedom. At last, Aslan returns. Beautiful and brave and instantly attractive, he has a deep voice and a commanding presence, obviously kingly. The White Witch conspires to have him killed, and succeeds, in part because of the children’s errors. Miraculously, he returns to life, liberates Narnia, and returns the land to spring.

Yet a central point of the Gospel story is that Jesus is not the lion of the faith but the lamb of God, while his other symbolic animal is, specifically, the lowly and bedraggled donkey. The moral force of the Christian story is that the lions are all on the other side. If we had, say, a donkey, a seemingly uninspiring animal from an obscure corner of Narnia, raised as an uncouth and low-caste beast of burden, rallying the mice and rats and weasels and vultures and all the other unclean animals, and then being killed by the lions in as humiliating a manner as possible—a donkey who reëmerges, to the shock even of his disciples and devotees, as the king of all creation—now, that would be a Christian allegory. A powerful lion, starting life at the top of the food chain, adored by all his subjects and filled with temporal power, killed by a despised evil witch for his power and then reborn to rule, is a Mithraic, not a Christian, myth. [...]

Lewis takes as his presumed opponent a naïve materialist who believes in progress and in the realm of common sense and the factual and verifiable, and who relegates imagination and myth and ritual to a doomy past. Lewis has a easy time showing that progress is dubious, that evil persists, that imagination has a crucial role to play in life, that life without a shared ritual and some kind of sacred myth is hardly worth living. But, trying to explain why God makes good people suffer, Lewis can answer only that God doesn’t, bad people do, and God gave bad people free will to be bad because a world in which people could only be good would be a world peopled by robots. Anyway, God never gives people pain that isn’t good for them in the long run. This kind of apologetic is better at explaining colic than cancer, let alone concentration camps.

– Adam Gopnick, Prisoner of Narnia

So, When Are You Going To Make Bishop?

Somebody asked me this the other day, and I found the question very telling. First off, why not? I look great in purple. You get the amethyst ring, the big hat, and a righteous-looking crozier. You get stuff addressed to "Your Excellency" in the mail. I have been known to be in turn witty and diplomatic and charming (and utterly full of shit) and know just enough Latin to impress the pants off someone who does not.

Except that Holy Orders are not like the Boy Scouts. It's not a badge or a sash to wear (although I think I'd clean up at the Miss Gnosticism pageant, for the sash and tiara alone) – it's a vocation. And honestly, I don't think the episcopate is mine.

I have a tremendous respect for a teeny tiny minority of the Wandering Episcopate; as Bishop +Hoeller once wrote, most of these people you wouldn't want in your living room. When I look at the work undertaken by those I respect – Bishops McCann, Miller, Hoeller, del Campo, and others – I'm inspired and comforted by the fact that they are out there, helping craft a respectful, integral ecclesiastical culture in which contemporary Gnosticism can continue to flourish and mature. But I do not feel we as a Gn community would really be served by adding any more. If there were, say, a twenty year moratorium on episcopal consecrations, I can't see any downside*

*except for the EG, who need another Bishop soon; the fact that they have only one Bishop for a church of their size may appear slightly cultish from the outside. I know they're not, but optics, people, optics.

It's far too easy (and too common) to throw together a website, the St. Sophia Independent Old Liberal Orthodox Catholic Templar Church of the Gnostic Magdalene, and get your episcopal consecration from the tarot-card reader at the bus station. Even if the form and matter are present (which are frequently questionable) the intent does not seem to be up to scratch.

I do respect the right for individual Bishops to define for themselves the role, but as I define it, when I look at people like The Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, and the kind of stick-handling required for the job – to be at once pastoral and compassionate while preserving central tenets and unity – well these people are breathing a pretty rarified air that I fear would divorce me from Priestcraft as I am growing to understand it.

What I love about the Priesthood is the accessibility, and the opportunities it allows me for listening. I find intensely rewarding the work of being down here in the trenches, cheerleading, sharing resources, administering the Sacraments. It's all humanity, and no politics.

So here I am, a simple Priest, over a month behind on my RGIA materials, hip-deep in my manuscript, a dozen e-mails behind in correspondence, shopping around for a new Mass space (we were always being double-booked at the Truth Centre), and going through the incorporation process to make the Church legal in British Columbia... oh, and raising four kids and renovating a hundred-year-old house and performing miracles for clients – suffice it to say that prolonged reflection of my assuming episcopal duties on top of that leads to imminent autodefenestration.

I think I look better in black, thank you.

The Cathar Diet

I read recently that a baker in the US got a half million dollar advance because he named his northern italian cuisine cookbook "The Da Vinci Diet". Cute.

For about a dozen years now I've followed the Cathar diet: I'm an organic-and-local vegetarian*, but I eat fish. My diet consists of good bread, fresh eggs, good cheeses, wild salmon, tuna, red wine (I favour oaky Languedoc Merlots and local Cabernets), organic root veggies and fresh herbs. (and um, coffee and chocolate) I don't eat a lot of leafy greens but I do make an awesome organic seared-tofu-in-black-bean-sauce and goat cheese salad.

I'm not a health freak, but I do work out and I don't smoke (because it's gross to other people. Smack addicts are more considerate because they only shoot themselves up) and I think that soft drinks are Satan. SATAN! Seriously if you have to give up cigs OR Pepsi, keep lighting up, my friend.

The biggest upside I can think of is that when I took a recent poll on Jeremy's site on my ecological footprint it turns out that I'm only using up one-and-a-half planets, (150% of my allowance, meaning all the world's resources divided by 6 billion or so) or owning half a slave. This is way below North American average, which I think works out to something like six and a half planets per person.

Plus, tasty food.

*although some have postulated that the Cathars were vegan, abstaining from eating any animal products whatsoever. You can take my moral high-ground, just leave me my brie.

My Hero

I have a few people who inspire me, largely by scaring the bejeezus out of me with the fervor of their conviction. One of these is my "um-sister" (my half sisters' half sister, my father was married to her mother) Aviel, who is a gifted artist and calligrapher. She has a better publicist than I do, but I still think I've had more death threats (although I believe hers, whereas mine have been pretty laughable). She is a blonde haired blue-eyed Jew, an Orthodox feminist, a female scribe in a context that does not allow for female scribes, an artist with shattered hands.

Aviel keeps me on my toes, challenges my assumptions, serves as my indispensable on-call gematria source, and font of weird internet links. She is likely the first woman in Jewish history to hand-write the sacred Torah scroll (for a progressive bunch in Seattle who have NO IDEA just how special she is or what her work demands of her, physically, spiritually, and emotionally). I am intensely proud of her, inspired by her gorgeous work, and in awe of her courage. VisionTV is airing a documentary about her Wednesday the 16th at 10 Eastern, and I encourage everyone to catch the broadcast.

She also has a blog which contains many words that sound eerily like Klingon, but also some thing which are fun to say like "mezuzah" which, alas, is not a musical instrument despite the fact that "mezuzah" would be a damn fine name for a musical instrument.

Anyway, please take an ecumenical dip into the fascinating world of Judaism (there would be no Gnosticism without Judaism) and check out the documentary. There'll be a Gn and Jx post soon...

Día de los Muertos

Calavera de la Catrina by José Guadalupe Posada

That night, we drive into Lagoa to a small Italian café on the sidewalk. The sky is alive with lightning, the night silent and rainless and offers only this incredible spectacle. The flashes are the purest amethyst, and we gasp and laugh and are made immortal with each strike, every eight seconds or so, for over an hour. Synapses of light. Skeleton fingers, spermatazoa. Quetzal serpents of light. The sparks worm their way into the fabric of our bodies, electrifying our cells and summoning songs of pre-human scale to rush in our blood. I turn and kiss Zandra on the cheek: "I feel like we just got married". She laughs at this, agreeing. Later we walk past the floodlit graveyard, cheerful with bright flowers. The dead here are still considered part of the family, are visited and spoken to and consulted, cared for.

– The Brasil Diaries, April 2000

This is the day of Mictecacihuatl, once Aztec guardian of bones, now Santa Muerta, patroness of those who live in the borders; smugglers, black marketeers, and those living under assumed identities. 3,000 years ago, she had an entire month, the month of August, but now she has a day of bread and flowers and sugar skulls, of candlelit cemeteries loud with playing children, keening widows, and gentle guitars. I see glints of her in my Aztec wife's eyes, and in they eyes of our daughter and son. I do love this quiet syncretism, grateful to hang on to my spooky for one more day past Halloween. Whereas last night I felt loss at those that I have known and known to die, today I feel a sweet nostalgia, all those little stories pulling at the side of my mouth, sad but somehow charming. The secret realization of having been blessed, undeserving and unexpected, but blessed nonetheless.

Samhain: A Prayer for the Dead

This is my favourite time of year here: the veil is so thin Faerie flickers in the corner of vision, one finds pennies in peculiar places, things go a little sideways and all that is concrete gives playful way to the amorphous and abstract. Everything – trees, cars, junk mail – is transubstantiated, its hypostasis relocated from the materia to the mythic realm. As Gnostics, as Witches, we're good at exploring this interstitial space. Did you really see that cat just now? Is that woman across the street... really human? Mortal? The masquerade that the mythic wears in the mundane is somehow just a little less convincing. Borders, boundaries, prose transmuted into poetry. And so to the Dead, the crossers of the border, those who are transported into memory; we remember and pray for you, our spells bolt you to our skin, if only for a little while.

Blessings be on the Dead that are; Blessings be on the Dead that know.

Nick, Robin and Sylvia
Violet and Sidney
Frank
Dave
and those unmet and yet not unloved

May you return safely to that infinite shore at night's ending, and find peace in the dissolution of the Pleroma.

Buddhism and Gnosticism

More good bits from The Allure of Gnosticism, this time an article by Edward Conze on the similarities between Mahayana Buddhism and Gnosticism on a few key points;

1) Salvation takes place through gnosis or jnana; ignorance is the root of evil, and gnosis is the result of personal revelation.

2) There are levels of spiritual attainment; in Gnosticism we see the hylic (material), psychic (soul) and pneumatic (spiritual) natures, just as in Mahayana Buddhism we see those destined for salvation, or destruction, or those whose destinies are not predetermined.

3) The role of Wisdom as both Goddess and Mother, ultimately responsible for (but not directly involved in) the created world.

4) The emphasis on participatory, relevant myth over historical fact.

5) Antinomianism, the idea that spiritual enlightenment either negates or trumps social convention and norms, include mundane laws and restrictions.

6) The distinction between the godhead and the creator god, who is perceived as either malicious or ignorant.

7) An elitist and esoteric posture. Attainment is seen as difficult, salvation not for the masses.

8) Both are ultimately monistic, advocating a re-union with the One.

Now personally I see strong parallels not only in Mahayana generally but Vajrayana specifically, particularly in its esoteric, almost Hermetic aspects.

There's also an excellent article on Buddhism and Gnosticism by Herbert Christian Merillat here.

The parallels are striking, and it seems improbable that both religions came to such conclusions independently (although my money is still on Kemet for the source-religion of Gnosticism).

Now, back to the punkins...