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