Sacramental Theology in Brief

Poetically defined in Christianity as "outward signs of inward grace", the word sacrament denotes something private, secret, and in Greek, a mystery (Orthodox Christians prefer the word "mystery" to "sacrament", but from a Gnostic standpoint these are taken synonymously).

Western religion has always acknowledged the role of ritual in amplifying and purifying this relationship, psychologically and socially. Which is to say that the sacraments are held to be divine in origin, and practical in application. In modern Protestant Christian churches, the sacraments are seen to be external or metaphoric only, for the benefit of the celebrants. The Gnostic view tends to be more similar to the Roman view - that the sacraments are in fact real; a supernatural event, in which the presence of a congregation ("visibility") is secondary.

Most Gnostics do not consider the sacraments specifically necessary for reunion with the Pleroma, as we all bear the spark of divinity it is our nature to return. Nor are they necessary for gnosis. Rather they are seen as part of a greater Magical Ritual, in which the Gnostic's journey through hyle, psyche and pneuma is informed, inspired, and celebrated. Culturally this outlook tends to make the Gnostic celebration of the sacraments more Traditional and solemn, in stark contrast to the folksy "guitar" Masses and tie-dye chasubles of contemporary Christian worship. In Gnosticism the sacraments are regarded as being a traditional part of the Initiation into the Mysteries, the origins of which are in Greek Mystery Schools and the temples of ancient Egypt.

The early nineteenth century Johannite church of Fabre Palaprat recognized the same seven sacraments of the Roman church, but Doinel's Gnostic church of 1890 held only five ("The Lord did everything in a mystery, a baptism and a chrism and a eucharist and a redemption and a bridal chamber."- The Gospel of Philip). The 1907 Schism brought the seven sacraments again into the Gnostic religion with the declaration of the Eglise Catholique Gnostique, which also counted the Priesthood among the Holy Orders (but omitted Doinel's female episcopal role, the Sophiate).

Given that the critical process of modern Gnosticism relies on the idea of rejection of and negotiation with Archonic/Planetary forces, the sacraments too can be understood as part of this negotiation. The Eucharist, the center of the Mysteries, is clearly Solar in nature and is virtually indistinguishable from its Dionysian and Mithraic predecessors. It is the Gnostic's confrontation with and transmutation of this solar force which gives the sacrament its meaning.

A Sacrament is composed of three elements; the rite (Sacramentum Tanti, itself composed of matter and form), the symbolism (Res et Sacramentum) and the Spiritual reality (Res Sacramenti).

Baptism: This is the lunar celebration of Birth into the Circle of community. It speaks to the element of water, of honouring tides, and the washing away of one's former identity and celebrates the emergence from the womb of the Mother. It is marked with typical Initiatory elements such as taking on a new name, and receiving passwords (mantras) or sacremental practices (mudras).

Sacramentum Tanti;
Matter: The baptized is annointed with water
Form:"I baptize you in the name of the Pleroma, the Xristos and the Pneuma Hagion"
Res et Sacramentum: The water is seen to wash away the blood of birth, and the baptized is recieved into the Church
Res Sacramenti: The soul of the baptized is purified by the Spirit, via the medium of the water, and by the Priest.

Confirmation: This is the strengthening of the Initiatory Intelligence of the celebrant, and relates to a more mature relationship with the Logos (and thereby the planet Mercury). Whereas the baptismal metaphors are clearly that of hylic birth, confirmation speaks to the individuation of the psyche. While baptism is considered a valid sacrament even to those too young to comprehend its significance ("infant baptism"), confirmation must be undertaken by a reasoned and receptive mind.

Sacramentum Tanti;
Matter: The Bishop lays hands upon the confirmed.
Form: "Strengthen, O Lord, your servant N. With your Holy Spirit; empower her for your service; and sustain her all the days of her life."
Res et Sacramentum: The confirmed is witnessed as having made an informed choice about their relation to the Church, and a commitment to their own Divinity.
Res Sacramenti: The confirmed is literally fortified by the Spirit.

Penance is the ritual forgiveness of sins committed after baptism, through the absolution of a priest to the genuinely sorrowful. By honestly confronting one's errors, and understanding how they interfere with one's reunion and betrays one's own gnosis, the Gnostic undergoes a jihad, or agon - a struggle between those aspects of self which are truly Spiritual and those which are temporally Demiurgic. This struggle reveals the Martial aspect of the sacrament. It is a tribunal in which the penitent is plaintiff, accused, and witness; the priest serves to adjudicate and offer methods of satisfaction so that justice can be restored. The penitent disassociates the errant actions from his or her Self, and surrenders them to the Divine, to which they thereafter belong. Culturally, the sacrament of penance seems to have the most "baggage", and is perhaps the most daunting. However, its purpose is not "judgemental" in the traditional understanding, but rather to acknowledge one's missteps, and to return to a state of mindfulness and focus.

Sacramentum Tanti;
Matter: The Priest lays his hands upon the head of the penitent
Form: "Ego te absolvo."
Res et Sacramentum: The penitent is forgiven, and invited to forgive herself, of her transgressions, and reconciled with the Church.
Res Sacramenti: The errors of the penitent are alchemically transmuted from base earthly events into the property of the Divine, and the penitent's Spirit is refreshed and relieved of the burden of error.

Eucharist is the central rite of the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, with its roots in antiquity. Like the myths of Heru (Horus), Woden, Dionysus, and Jesus, it speaks to the Incarnation of an aspect of the Divine. It is the charging of the material with Spiritual force. The form of the rite is most recently derived from the Sol Invictus cult, but its similarity with both both Dionysian and Mithraic rituals cannot be overlooked (the Traditional idea that the Mass is derived from the agape feasts of early Christians must be dismissed as historically indefensible). It is in essence a proclamation of the "ghost in the machine", and an actual information of the hylic with the pneumatic, causing a real change in the substance of both the Host and the celebrant.

Sacramentum Tanti;
Matter: The bread and wine are blessed as the body and blood of the Incarnate Divine, and consumed
Form:"The Body of Xrist", and "The Blood of Xrist"
Res et Sacramentum: The Incarnate descends into the Host, and the celebrants partake in the renewal of the sacrifice of descent.
Res Sacramenti: The Host is inspired and transmuted into the essence of the Divine. Consumption is actual Communion with its essence.

Matrimony's association with the planet Venus is obvious, and the sacrament is another analog of the Incarnation, being a fusion between and cooperation of two substances. The marriage of two people coming together in a Spiritual context to help make each other more Divine is seen as a parallel to the Bride Chamber of Sophia ("There is glory which surpasses glory. There is power which surpasses power. Therefore, the perfect things have opened to us, together with the hidden things of truth. The holies of the holies were revealed, and the bridal chamber invited us in.").

Great is the mystery of marriage! For without it, the world would not exist.
- The Gospel of Philip

Sacramentum Tanti;
Matter: The couple to be married exchange rings and vows of their love, "now and forever"
Form:"Now that you have pledged yourselves to each other in the presence of your family and friends and exchanged rings as public symbols of your commitment to each other, I do, by the virtue of the authority vested in me, pronounce you, N and N, partners as husband and wife. "
Res et Sacramentum: The two are joined symbolically into a new, conjoined person
Res Sacramenti: a "third-party entity" is created and inspired by the couple, and witnessed by the Priest.

The structure of Holy Orders - literally sequence - functions pragmatically to discern the clergy from the laity, but it is the Sacrament of Orders to which we will address our attention. The Church is a supernatural society, and it is within the order - particularly Apostolic order - that spiritual power is conferred, not as the source, but rather as a medium. The sacrament bestows a spiritual Kingship upon the ordained, resulting in the expansion of the Church - thereby it is associated with Jupiter.

Sacramentum Tanti;
Matter: The laying-on of hands and transmission of authority to the ordained
Form:"Receive now the Holy Spirit for the Office and work of a Priest in the Church of God"
Res et Sacramentum: The ordained is initiated into a clerical responsibility, which is to say the ability to respond.
Res Sacramenti: The ordained receives an indelible impression of the Spirit, allowing her or him to administer the Sacraments.

Because of its association with healing grave illness and the end of life, Extreme Unction (unction of those in extremis) is associated with the planet Saturn (sphere of Limit, and of Time). Unction is the remission of the sins of the senses and acts of commission through annointing (euchalion)- as Baptism is Initiation into the powers of life, so is Extreme Unction an Initiation into the powers of death. Historically it is also the Hermetic invocation of the role of they divine Physician, and the idea of Soter as Healer. This too assumes the principle of Incarnation, that the pneumatic can indwell and influence the hylic world.

Sacramentum Tanti;
Matter: The person is anointed with oil (blessed by a Bishop) and forgiven for their errors, in preparation for death.
Form: "By this Holy + Unction and of his most tender love, the Lord pardon you whatever faults you have committed through your thoughts and desires and the senses of your body."
Res et Sacramentum: The anointed is initiated into the imminence of their death, the rite allowing them first to let go of the illusion generated by the sense-body before shedding the body itself.
Res Sacramenti: The identity and domain of the person is shifted from the material world to that of the spiritual. In this regard it is analogous to the Consolamentum of the Cathars.

[Planetary attributions from Charles Upton's "The Esoteric Sacraments", Gnosis magazine No. 16, Summer 1990. Yes, I have this lying around.]

Ordination at St. Joseph of Arimathea Parish, Apostolic Johannite Church, May 27th 2005

Patriarch +Shaun McCann Ep. Gn. (Mar Iohannes IV) and a newly-minted Priest

From your prophets have we heard,
Of the gift your Light conferred;
We have proved your holy word;
Most Holy Sophia.

Most Holy Logos, whose strength is in the silence, grant that this your servant whom now you join unto yourself in the holy bond of the Priesthood, may hence forward minister faithfully of the priestly power to those who ask in your Name.

I will have more to share later, but I just got back from Calgary a few hours ago, and more than I am exhausted I am overwhelmed by the loving generosity and inspirational integrity of both my Bishop and Monsignor Ken Madden+. More than just my ecclesiastical superiors, they're my Brothers. And to come home from newfast friends to my family... I have more blessings than I can bear.

Ερμης ο Τρισμεγιστος

On the Feast of Hermes Trismegistus:

"The restoration of the nature of the pious ones who are good will take place in a period of time that never had a beginning. For the will of God has no beginning, even as his nature, which is his will (has no beginning). For the nature of God is will. And his will is the good."

- Asclepius
Tip o' the zooch to Jennifer

Excellent LA Weekly Article

Photo: Slobodan Dimitrov, without permission, sorry

The word is gnostic (nah-stick), from the Greek gnosis (inner knowledge), and as opposed to agnostics, who claim to know nothing of the divine, Gnostics are privy to a secret both terrible and wondrous. It is a knowledge that has kept them underground for 1,800 years, tarred as heretics by the Christian orthodoxy. It’s hard to say whether or not Cardinal Roger Mahony has ever heard of Stephan Hoeller, but it’s not difficult to imagine that there are nights when he wakes to see a shadow on the wall, an elfin shadow with a Beat Era goatee and a round belly. Gnosticism is the dog that nips at Rome’s heels, the orphaned child tugging at its cuffs, reminding the Church of what — and whom — it left behind. For nearly two millennia, the family secret was safely in the crypt, but in 1945, as we shall see, the ground shifted, and in the early years of our new century, thanks in some ironic measure to the very mainstream success of The Matrix and The Da Vinci Code, the vault burst open. Stephan Hoeller is the counter-cardinal of an L.A. nobody knows, and until last year’s fire destroyed his church, he was the bishop of Hollywood Boulevard.

- Exile in Godville, by A.W. HILL

Three Christianities

[To start off I'd like to clarify something; Gnosticism and Christianity are like companions in a buddy movie - they are on the road together, and share histories and experiences, but they are not the same person. One character can form bonds with the other, genuinely become concerned about him, without becoming him. Well, maybe more like roommates where one guy drinks milk out of the carton and keeps threating to evict you from "his place". But I digress.]

I've spent the last year reading a number of blogs and articles from "Believing Christians", which is to say, those for whom the exclusivity of the Christian religion is obvious, as is the finality of Scriptural Authority. They loathe modernity, "neo-gnosticism", moral relativism, "private judgment", Kung, Harpur, Spong, Vatican II, ecumenism, and inclusiveness. They are right, and everybody else is wrong, and they openly wave this flag. Honestly, I admire their integrity and the strength of their convictions. They love to argue, appreciate Aristotle, but are a sucker for their own incessant straw-man fallacies. They are not in and of themselves "mean-spirited" or particularly "hateful" but it would be an understatement to say that I would not care to live in a world made from their values (ie Red America).

So after spending a year with the online personae of a number of these folks, it seems to me that they are correct in their assertion that
a) Christianity is turning into something else, and
b) that this presents a crisis for them personally and for the Christian Tradition as a whole.
It is also quite apparent that there is something else going on of which they seen entirely unaware.

Christianity A is the folksy, "Christian values" ethos. Turn the other cheek, love thy neighbour, the greatest of these is love. It's the Christianity that brings candles to the elderly in a power cut, helps somebody with a heavy suitcase, donates canned goods to the food bank. It honours the earth, apologizes for the Holocaust and for the treatment of indigenous peoples and cultures, believes that God wants happiness and justice for all people. Of course, these are also modern, secular values, Jewish values, Buddhist values, Pagan values. It's nice. It's also exactly what its critics say it is; modern, inclusive, general rather than specific, self-contradictory and okay with that, and far outside the Christianity envisioned by Scripture or the Nicean Church fathers.

Christianity B is pretty clear on the whole "faith, not works" thing. You don't blink, you don't compromise, there's the Word of God, and things that are not the Word of God. In the rare cases where Scripture is unclear, you have Tradition to fall back on. There is a Hell, and Buddhists, gays, Gnostics, seafood, poly-cotton blends and the Anglican Bishop of New Hampshire go there forever. It's not nice. It doesn't want to be nice. It's like tuning a carburetor: the screw turns this way, at this point, with this screwdriver, or it doesn't work and you're wasting everybody's time.

Believing Christians believe in Christianity B, and furthermore they're pretty sure that Christianity A isn't Christian, and they wish that the tolerant, New Age "can't we all just getting along" Christianity A folks would either shut the hell up or call themselves something else. A water buffalo is not a penguin, even if the water buffalo is wearing a tux. Now of course, intolerance is not in and of itself evil: an operating room is intolerant of bacteria. A mathematical equation is intolerant of error. A courtroom is intolerant of perjury. Scripture says you can't be tolerant, and obviously you can't be tolerant (nice) and intolerant (scriptural) at the same time. These days it's called "fundamentalism", but 100 years ago we just called it "Christianity".

My personal bias is that the world is made a better place by Christianity A, whereas every chance that Christianity B has had to run things has resulted in general unpleasantness for all concerned. And as a Gnostic I can plainly state that neither of these Christianities can save you from the Archons, although A will weaken them and B makes them fat and happy. Below is a snapshot of the conflict* between A and B Christianity; excerpts from a speech by ECUSA Presiding Bishop +Frank Griswold (Christianity A), and an internet response (Christianity B).

"We are reconciled in sharing the one bread and the cup, and we are not necessarily reconciled in having one point of view.

And I think in a culture and in a world in which polarization is ever more present, and I look at the political rhetoric we’re treated to in this country and it is simply appalling. Things get said that admit no midpoint. Everything is in utter black and white. We deal in only the most stark languages, and therefore the subtleties, the nuances, the ambiguities which are often the places where people actually live, are simply written out of public discourse. And I see it happening politically, I see it happening ecclesiastically, and therefore I think it is all the more important for us to claim, confidently, a heritage that can deal with nuance-subtlety-paradox-ambiguity, and say, you know, all of life isn’t black or white, a lot of it is gray, because that’s where we live.

And I think too that, I’m of a generation, I was asked today, my views of how, clergy under 40 are different than people over 40 and I’m a little bit over 40, and I thought for a moment and I realized that I grew up in a world in which things were, at least on the surface, declared “clear.” I lived in a world of either-or, right and wrong, perfectly discernable. I think we’ve moved to a different kind of world. We’ve moved out of an either-or world into a quantum world in which many things can be true at the same time and held in tension, we’re in a both-and world, and I think younger clergy live in that world, and can make room for multiple dimensions to reality without having to wrestle everything down to one point of view. And they can live that way respectfully, holding their own take on the truth, but accepting the fact that that take on truth has to encounter and be in some ways balanced by other takes on truth.

[...] I am grateful for grayness, ambiguity, paradox, contradiction, humor, and all the rest. I wouldn’t be anything else, and maybe you wouldn’t be either, and how can we share this gift more confidently, with the world for its own healing."

And the comment:

"What is this crap about a “quantum world". I suspect that he has gotten a number of principles of quantum THEORY mixed up and has come to some very ridiculous conclusions. I suspect that he is caught up in a laymans fantasy of Heisenburg’s Uncertainty Principle and Schrodinger’s illustration of the principle of superposition aka Schrodinger’s Cat. I will try to illustrate this in a succinct manner. Superposition basically says that WHILE we do not what the state of any OBJECT is, it is simultaneously in all possible states. Fine, the rest of the principle is that once the state is observed then ONLY ONE possible state then exists.

[...] To apply the concept to the present debate and Scripture. The box is open, Scripture has been revealed, the is no both and—there is no indeterminacy— there is only actual observed fact."

- Charlie E

You can discern from the comment a few fundamental tenets of "pray 'n obey" Christianity B: Theology is over, we have all the ideas we need. Any need for an observer is moral relativism. Any questioning or analysis is "private judgment", which is so not Christian it's not even funny. Christians must surrender their minds completely, which does beg the question why God bothered to give them one in the first place. All is absolutes, certainty, monolithic. Right. And what proves them right is that Christianity B has survived millennia (bankrupt dioceses and priestless parishes notwithstanding), whereas ECUSA's modernist heresy is circling the drain after barely fifty years.

Christianity C: Here's where it gets interesting. There has always existed a subcurrent within Christianity B that has privately acknowledged;

- Scripture is only Scripture because some people decided it was, and other people disagreed. The first people got to be right through time-honoured debating tactics, such as forgery and murder.

- Tradition is not history, not what happened, it's only what you tell people what happened. [Along the lines of the 1066 And All That definition that history is not what happened, history is what you remember.]

A Catholic Priest will, in a sermon, quote from Timothy knowing full well that its a late third century forgery and has as much to do with Paul as I do. He will preach about the Massacre of the Innocents even though he knows it didn't happen, and will not confuse the authors of John with the author of Revelations or the Apostle John, even though he will encourage others to do so. This is clerical Christianity, nod and wink Christianity. This is the "one for the cheap seats" elitism that has really been the determining factor in the survival of the Christian Church. Dishonest? Only harmlessly and pragmatically so. It is a "nice", responsible Christianity, requiring education, that allows you to keep your brain. The trick is, it only works if you shut up about it. The problem with Spong, Griswold et al is that they let the cat out of the bag.

It's still not Gnosticism: we're miles apart on christology, soterology, and sophiology, and Christianity and Gnosticism will likely never be reconcilable in this regard. But at least you can talk to these people.


*On a side note, the clearly heretical and hellfire-bound Questioning Christian blog has drawn up a very civil list of the Rules of Engagment so that A and B can continue to talk to each other.

Pentecost

Last year I was blessed to stand silently before the above image, a sandstone carving of the Egyptian god-form Khnum (kneph, spirit or breath) from around 1550 BCE. Khnum is regarded as one of the oldest of the netjeru, the "names" or articulated conceptions of the divine.

Unlike a primitive storm god or mountain god or cow god, Khnum demonstrates an abstract awareness of the divinity of life. As long as something breathes, it has a spark, an indwelling magic, that goes away when the breathing stops. But that breath is seen to survive - leave the body yes, but endure. Hence the idea of breath evolving into the idea of Spirit. The Pneuma Hagion.

So Pentecost is the season in which the Western Religion, the Holy (whole) and Catholic (universal) Church, celebrates the descent of the Pneuma. The story says, don't worry, the physical "Jesus" you knew and loved is gone, but the real mojo, the ubiquitous and eternal Holy Spirit, is with you right now, bringing Inspiration and Comfort. This is clearly an allegory of Initiation.

Christians begin with the story of a carpenter from Nazareth, who ate bread and wore sandals and existed in a time and place. This is a simple introductory framework for Wisdom in the form of parables. Pentecost speaks to the next stage of Initiation: the Jesus you knew was a myth, a composite, not an historical person, but a necessary degree in your Initiation into the Mysteries. You are now ready for a more adult, abstract idea of God; you can put away childish things.

As in conception, from the Father issues forth the Seed (the Logos) to take root in the Mother (the Spirit), wherein it is nurtured and matured. So too is the process of inspiration and maturation of the Gnostic.

"There is among our tenets one to which I shall call particular attention: the tenet of feminine salvation. The work of the Father has been accomplished, that of the Son as well. There remains that of the Spirit, which alone is capable of bringing about the final salvation of humanity on earth and thereby, of laying the way for the reconstitution of the Spirit. Now the Spirit, the Paraclete, corresponds to what the divine partakes of a feminine nature, and our teachings state explicitly that this is the only facet of the godhead that is truly accessible to our mind."

- Fabre des Essarts (Tau Synesius) 1908

Terje on Pentecost

"Friends, I am trying to speak of how the Gnosis is different. How the events of the journey of Yeshuah and the disciples is differently received by Gnostics. How we may profess with the Orthodox the same things, with good conscience, with the words we speak signifying a different, esoteric, unspoken meaning. This is not deceit. We know that some are able to partake of the same meal which we prepare. We know that some will hear the precise intention in our words, to see the sincerity in our actions; without being cued or having a lot of arcane boulderdash being explained to them. This is how we can participate in the same communion. And we do not need to insist upon a spectacular outward form for that which is internally unique and received. A Church Catholic is universal, it is not our flesh and our blood, it is neither martyrs or prophets, it is neither clergy nor laity, it is neither male nor female, it has no sexual orientation at all, it answers to no ethnicity, culture or race. God is untranslateable to any known language, therefore we break this word that we may live."

- Terje Bergersen

There's also a brilliant quote in an earlier post, on The Knighthood of Sophia;

[...] destiny of the human beings who “Choose” the Path of Recollection, who choose to submit to the Quest belonging to the Knighthood of Sophia. Whose Motto is recited in the Yasna Liturgy as

"May we be among those who will bring about the Transfiguration of the Earth".

Song of the Ophites

White lily with red rose
We wed,
And with secret, prophetic dream
We attain eternal Truth.

Speak the prophetic word!
Quickly cast your pearls into the cup;
Now bind our Dove
With new coils of the old Serpent.

The free heart hurts not!
Should the Dove fear Promethean fire?
The pure Dove is calm
In the flaming coils of the mighty Serpent.

Sing about violent tempests!
In violent tempests we find repose;
For white lily with red rose
We wed.

- Vladimir Soloviev

Why I Want To Be A Priest

The First Reason

About a dozen years ago, I was driving along a busy road, just past an intersection with a much busier road. Traffic was backing up on the busier road to my right, and I glanced over and saw why.

A small car had stalled, and the hapless driver was being pushed up a very steep hill by a very small uniformed female police officer. I pulled into an office parking lot, and quickly caught up to the car and started pushing. Wordlessly we got the thing a few hundred metres up the hill, and over the curb cut to a gas station, and out of traffic. We stood up, the officer and I, and for the first time she acknowledged that I was there, with a simple, clear nod.

The nod spoke volumes. She'd had an impossible day of irate ticket-recipients, downtown drunks, breaking bad news, interrupted coffee breaks, paperwork, union regulations. But despite that, the nod said we were kindred. That there are people who, for whatever reason, go into law enforcement, become paramedics, outreach workers, or just pull over to push a stranded car up a hill. Because it's they way they're wired.

Some of those people become clergy.

The Real Reason

[WARNING: Fanboy geekout ahead]
In 1977 I was 11 years old, and my friends Scott and Dave and Mike rode our bikes downtown to see Star Wars. Like a million North American children, we repeated this 17 times over that summer. If there was one thing I knew in my bones, it was that I wanted to be a Jedi. Samurai philosopher sheriff from outer space.

A solitary individual, dedicated to a greater Tradition through ethical and mental discipline. Living by a Code of nobility and service, in clandestine opposition to a corrupt and unworthy Authority. Master and Apprentice. Fighting the law not with chaos but with a greater and Truer Law. The monastic robes, the bearing, the lack of hesitation, the depth of wisdom. How cool is that?

I pursued zen meditation and martial arts, like my friends. We swore oaths of brotherhood, to overthrow the Empire and restore the Republic, and made lightsabres out of broom handles. We grew up between Middle Earth and Tatooine.

I was and remain a sort of pragmatic idealist (ENFP:Champion for you Temperament Sorter types out there). The Empire turned out to be real enough (the Archons), as did the Force (the Pneuma Hagion). However instead of lightsabres and X-Wings to fight the rebellion, we have the Sacraments.

Now, please, I'm not saying here that I want to take Holy Orders because I never got over wanting to blow up the Death Star (or that I'd sign up with the "oh come on" Jedi Religion) - but we are presented with stirrings, and signals, throughout our childhood and our entire life. I similarly wanted to live outlaw with Robin Hood in the forest, undermining a corrupt and unworthy Authority until the return of the Rightful King. To be the Grail Knight in the Wasteland, brave the Chapel Perilous, rescue the Damsel (Sophia) and heal the wounded Fisher King.

While the first reason is more macho, I cannot escape the second as being more honest.

MDCCCXC

At first glance, overwhelming similarity - but on closer inspection, a subtle yet critical distinction. Instantly recognizable by those "in the know".

Remind you of anything?

MDCCCXC

A Common Symbol?
Well, the idea of finding a rallying glyph or logo for all of Big G Gnosticism was of course futile (albeit fun), but I do in all serious put forth the above beastie as a common symbol to represent The Restoration of the Gnosis begun in 1890, along with the roman numerals above. I'm going to make a series of image source files and see how long it takes someone to start selling tee shirts and coffee mugs on Café Press.

Why the elevenfold cross? It's unique, distinctive, symmetrical and strong. It's suggestive of the Jerusalem cross and yet not overtly Christian; equilateral (solar) and not cruciform. The four Gospels and Christ; or the four elements and Spirit; or Malkuth, Yesod, Hod, Netzakh, and Tipareth.

And please understand I'm not saying "wear this or you're not a Gnostic" but rather suggesting that identifying oneself with the symbol above can be a declaration that one is of accord with the aims and principles of the Gnostic Restoration.

And yes, I will get the tattoo.

Parzival

"So now the Holy Thing is here again
Among us, fast thou too and pray
That so perchance the vision may be seen
By thee and those, and all the world be healed."

The Feast of St. Ratford

As today marks the Feast of St. Ratford, the Holy Gnostic Excusagist (apologetics is for pikers), I like many of you will be taking the day off to drink absinthe, delivered by room service in an ocean-view hotel, with a beautiful dark-eyed Mexican girl, as did the Blessed Gnostics Saints of, um, Antioch. Somewhere around there.

May the Blessings of St. Ratford be upon you (but not his credit rating. Oy).

Ecclesia Gnostica Mysteriorum...

has a beautiful new website.

I first became aware of Bishop Rosa Miller through a rare British TV 4-part doc-series called The Gnostics (which has yet to resurface to DVDism), and later when she was profiled in Caitlin Matthews' Sophia. I first contacted +Rosamonde about a dozen years ago, after I left the EGC, and was looking for a Church to call home, but we never connected, and again about 3 years ago when I volunteered to fix the EGM website (they passed on the offer). As a Sophianic Gnostic, I've always admired her efforts and her approach to Gnosticism. She graciously sent me a very kind note shortly after I started ths blog. I guess it's fair to say I've always had a sort of ecclesiastical crush on her.

Despite my very obvious need for therapy, check out the new site.

This is agroup of people with a sense of humor. Life is too serious for us to take ourselves seriously. We enjoy life and all it has to offer. We rejoice in the discoveries of science: the decoding of the DNA, the functioning of the brain, the wresting of the mysteries within the heart of the atom itself, the new physics, modern technology, and the computer age. We rejoice in poetry, music, and dance. We rejoice in nature.

[...]We are not dualists and do not follow any one school of Gnostic "thought," ancient or modern, such as Valentinian, Basilidian or Marcionite, among others. We today, as did our early Gnostic ancestors, maintain our freedom to inquire and explore all levels of existence, unfettered by the consensus beliefs of our society and times. We do not follow "Gnostic doctrines," the term amounting to an oxymoron, any more than any other belief handed down through the centuries. Gnosis is a matter of experience, not belief.

[...]We hold ourselves open for that Supreme Mystery to manifest in all its life and splendor in each blinding, eternal moment. This is not a goal—something to reach and obtain, like a degree—so that we may call ourselves "enlightened." We strive to be intensely aware at all times, free from conditioning and expectations, for Gnosis cannot be coerced, only invited, so it may move and dwell in us.

We reject all prejudices. We stand for the dignity of all sentient beings and their freedom to choose and inquire deeply within; to question all formulas; to explore without assumptions or taking anything for granted. We stand for our right to find our way out from all conditioning; to make our own choices and decisions, be them of faith, of lifestyle or of anything pertaining to us as individuals. We stand for our right to face life without fear and to look at the unknown with courage and joy. These Gnostics are not pessimistic, but see life as a great adventure.

- Bishop Rosamonde Miller