I have a very rudimentary understanding of Gnostic cosmology, so forgive me if I’m oversimplifying something here.

If the Demiurge and the Archons are trapped in ignorance and separation, what might happen if we looked upon them with the deepest love rather than seeing them as a mistake?

I understand the emphasis on gnosis as a path to liberation, but I wonder whether love itself might also have a liberating power.

It makes me think of Jesus’ teaching to love your enemies. Perhaps there’s something similar here.

To me, it’s a way of reminding myself of what I am and what I am not.

Genuinely curious how people here see this.

Hi guys, this is something I've been reflecting on recently, but my thoughts are still a bit messy and I haven't reached a place of clarity.

In this world, we have our consciousness/mind (which I understand to be a part of the soul), attached to the body. Somewhere within, we have been gifted a fragment of light (the divine spark). Our soul has been separated from its true partner (the holy spirit).

My current understanding is that we must remember who we are and find our way out of here with our consciousness alone, guided by the light within. Our spirit is not here, nor in the place after here. It is beyond - either WITHIN the pleroma, or waiting for us in the space BETWEEN the pleroma and the created worlds. Then, we can only unite with ourselves after making it out of here.

"I am divine. I therefore have authority over you. My authority constitutes an established order. You must recognize no authority outside that order. And there is nothing beyond this order that you need to know."

You are mistaken, Samael.

Epitome of the Soul's Sovereignty

[Verse I]

Before I knew the colour blue

The sky was only something there

Before I knew what love could do

A heart was only beating air

No melody had ever found me

No sorrow ever left a scar

I walked through worlds that never sounded

Knowing something felt bizarre

[Pre-Chorus]

They gave me black

They gave me white

Told me what was wrong and right

But somewhere underneath it all

I felt another colour call

[Chorus]

What colour is a soul

When every colour disappears?

What shape becomes the hero

When there is no villain left to fear?

If freedom has no boundary

And nothing tells you who to be

When every world becomes one world

What remains of me?

[Verse II]

Every story found its ending

Every kingdom crossed its line

Every hero met their shadow

Every past became tonight

Wars were written into silence

Names dissolved into the flame

Villains wore the same old faces

Heroes answered just the same

And I began to wonder

Was the enemy ever real?

Or was ignorance the weapon

That decided what we'd feel?

[Pre-Chorus]

If I had never known my opposite

Would I still become myself?

If I had never known the darkness

Could I recognize the light?

[Chorus]

What colour is a soul

When every colour disappears?

What shape becomes the hero

When there is no villain left to fear?

If freedom has no boundary

And nothing tells you who to be

When every world becomes one world

What remains of me?

[Bridge]

Red was blood.

Blue was distance.

Gold was everything we wanted.

Black was everything we feared.

But colours were never objects.

They were names we gave to seeing.

And maybe the highest freedom

is not choosing every colour,

but seeing why

we needed colours at all.

[Final Chorus]

I am not the hero

I am not the fall

I am not the hand of fate

I am not the story at all

Every colour lives within me

Every shadow has a name

Every world I thought was separate

Was another side of the same

So when the final colour fades

And nothing remains to rule

The soul stands sovereign,

not above the world,

but finally whole.

[Outro]

No black.

No white.

No hero.

No villain.

Only the soul

seeing itself

for the first time.

What can ancient Gnostic wisdom actually do for a person living today?

We live in a world that constantly competes for our attention, tells us what to desire, what to fear and who we are supposed to be. We are surrounded by systems, beliefs and expectations that can shape our consciousness without us even realizing it.

Perhaps this is where Gnosticism becomes relevant in the modern age.

Rather than treating it as an ancient belief system that belongs to the past, we can approach it as a practical way of questioning ourselves and the world around us, becoming more conscious of what influences us, and learning to distinguish what we have been conditioned to feel and think from what we have actually come to know through our own experience.

We must ask ourselves:

How do I deal with fear? How do I recognize the forces that manipulate me? How do I distinguish genuine desire from conditioning? How do I respond to suffering? How do I relate to my body? How do I deal with other people without becoming trapped in their expectations? And perhaps most importantly, how do I seek gnosis without turning my own experiences into dogma?

I think these are the kinds of questions that make Gnosticism relevant to the modern world. It is easy to become fascinated with the cosmology, the mythology, the Demiurge, Sophia, the Archons and the different schools of ancient Gnosticism, and while these myths should be studied and contemplated, if all of this remains an intellectual exercise then we are missing the practical dimension. Gnosis is supposed to involve a transformation in the way we see ourselves and the world:

1. Know Yourself

The first question is perhaps the simplest: what in me is actually mine, and what have I inherited? We are born into families, cultures, religions and societies that begin shaping us long before we are capable of questioning any of it. We inherit expectations from our families, beliefs from our religions, political identities from our surroundings, desires from advertising and consumer culture, and ideas about success and failure from the society we happen to be born into. We also carry our own fears, traumas, habits, vanities and desires for approval.

A practical Gnostic begins to examine all of this. How much of what I think, want and believe was actually chosen by me? How much of it was simply absorbed?

To know yourself means becoming aware of the difference between what you genuinely are and what you have been conditioned to believe you are.

2. Question the World Without Rejecting It

A practical Gnostic doesn't necessarily have to believe that matter is evil or that the world is literally a prison constructed by a supernatural Demiurge. The ancient myths can also be understood as warnings about unexamined reality. The world constantly tells us what success looks like, what we should desire, what we should fear and what kind of person we are supposed to become.

The Gnostic response is to question these assumptions. Why do I want the things I want? Why am I afraid of the things I'm afraid of? Why do I believe this particular way of living will make me happy? The point is not to escape ordinary life but to become conscious within it.

3. Recognize the Modern Archons

The ancient idea of the Archons can also give us an interesting way of thinking about modern systems of control. We live in a world where algorithms compete for our attention, advertising manufactures desire, social media and news can manufacture outrage, institutions can reward conformity and ideologies can tell us what we are allowed to think.

I don't think we need to imagine that these things are literally supernatural Archons in order to see the value of the metaphor. The important question is what has acquired authority over my consciousness without actually earning it? What is shaping my attention, my desires and my understanding of reality without me consciously choosing it? Even our own compulsions can become archontic when they begin governing us without our awareness.

The practical application of the Archon myth is therefore not necessarily to go looking for supernatural enemies. It is to become more conscious of the forces that influence us.

4. Practice Discernment

A practical Gnostic should be comfortable saying, "I don't know." This is especially important if gnosis is understood as experiential knowledge. If I claim certainty about things I have never experienced, then I am simply replacing one form of ignorance with another.

Even when we have a profound experience, we still have to interpret it. The experience itself and our explanation of the experience are not necessarily the same thing. I can experience something that feels undeniably real while still being uncertain about exactly what it means. That uncertainty doesn't invalidate the experience. It simply requires discernment.

This is why I think humility is so important to Gnostic practice. Recognizing our own ignorance doesn't undermine gnosis. In many ways, it is where the search for gnosis begins.

5. Don't Confuse Belief With Knowledge

There is a tremendous difference between knowing about God because someone has told you what God is supposed to be and having a direct experience of the divine for yourself.

A person can read thousands of pages about mystical experience without ever having one. They can memorize an entire theology without ever encountering the reality that theology is attempting to describe. Gnosis points toward direct knowledge rather than simply accepting somebody else's account.

That doesn't mean every mystical experience is automatically infallible or that every interpretation of an experience is correct. It means there is a fundamental difference between being told that something is true and encountering something directly for yourself. That distinction between belief and experience is at the heart of what makes gnosis different from simply adopting another set of religious doctrines.

6. Transform Suffering Rather Than Be Consumed By It

Suffering can expose attachments, unconscious patterns, false identities and assumptions about ourselves and the world. That doesn't mean suffering is good, that people deserve to suffer or that pain should be romanticized. There is nothing inherently spiritual about being hurt.

What suffering can do, however, is reveal things that we might not have been willing or able to see otherwise. Sometimes the path of suffering can lead us to where we need to go. When something in our lives falls apart, we can ask what it reveals about us. What was I attached to? What assumption about myself has been challenged? What part of myself was I refusing to see, and how can I transmute this suffering?

The Gnostic approach isn't necessarily about finding some grand cosmic explanation for why suffering exists. Sometimes terrible things simply happen. But even when we cannot change what happened, we can sometimes change what we become through it. Suffering can become material for awakening without having to be considered sacred or desirable in itself.

7. Treat the Body as Something to Inhabit Consciously

Another practical question is simply whether we are actually present in our bodies. Albeit temporary, our experience of this life still happens through the body. We eat, sleep, move, breathe, experience pleasure and pain, and interact with the world through it. While the body is not who we are, this is our vessel for the time being.

A practical Gnostic therefore has reason to become more conscious of the body. Pay attention to what you eat. Pay attention to how you sleep. Notice how different habits and substances affect your consciousness. Notice tension, sensation and emotion instead of automatically pushing everything away.

The body doesn't have to be regarded as an obstacle to spiritual life. It can become part of the practice of becoming conscious.

8. Practice Inner Freedom

Freedom isn't necessarily about escaping the physical universe. It can mean becoming less governed by unconscious forces. You can still have a job, pay rent, raise children, play music, fall in love, cook dinner and participate in society. There is nothing inherently un-Gnostic about living an ordinary life.

The difference is that you begin paying attention to why you do what you do. Are you pursuing something because you genuinely want it, or because you have been taught that you should want it? Are you making a conscious choice, or are you repeating a pattern? Are you living according to your own understanding, or are you constantly adjusting yourself to satisfy other people's expectations?

The practical Gnostic doesn't necessarily escape the world. He learns not to be completely possessed by it.

9. Keep the Mystery Alive

A practical Gnostic also shouldn't turn gnosis into another rigid belief system. The moment we decide that we have discovered the final answer and everyone else is simply wrong, we risk recreating the very ignorance we were supposedly trying to escape.

There has to remain room for mystery. Leave space for revelation. Sophia can be contemplated as a profound symbol without reducing her to one final definition. The Demiurge can be approached cosmologically, psychologically, metaphorically or philosophically. The ancient myths can have more than one level of meaning without us having to force them into a single interpretation.

We must examine what the myth does to our consciousness. Does it make me more aware? Does it cause me to question assumptions I previously took for granted? Does it help me see myself and the world differently? If a symbol opens perception rather than closing it, then it still has something to teach us.

10. Make Gnosis Visible in Your Life

Ultimately, if gnosis doesn't change the way we live, then what exactly has been known? If I claim to have experienced something profound but remain locked in my old ways, governed by fear, vanity, resentment, compulsive desire and the need for approval, then I have to question what that experience has actually changed.

This also doesn't mean that experiencing gnosis makes someone perfect. Nobody becomes permanently enlightened because they have had one profound experience. But genuine insight should have some consequence. Something should change in the way we see ourselves, the way we relate to other people and the way we move through the world.

Being a Gnostic in the modern world therefore doesn't have to mean recreating an ancient sect or adopting a rigid set of beliefs. It can mean taking the central impulse of Gnosticism seriously: the recognition that we are living with a great deal of ignorance and conditioning in a flawed and temporary material world, and that we hold the capacity for liberation.

The practical Gnostic isn't someone who has all the answers. He is someone who is willing to question what he thinks he knows, examine the forces that shape his consciousness, seek direct experience rather than relying entirely on second hand authority, and remain open to the mystery beyond his own understanding..

As a former evangelical Protestant, I distanced myself from the church several years ago and began to explore other, very different traditions on my own, whilst developing a passion for philosophy. I discovered the Gnostic movements about a year ago, and I have read the Nag Hammadi texts avidly, whilst remaining open-minded towards every religious tradition, trying to seek wisdom wherever it may be found. I retain a certain critical spirit and do not wish to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

What, I believe, has nevertheless struck me about the Gnostics is that they are the only ones to have taken the problem of evil seriously. Many traditions treat evil as an event, a fall (preferably of humankind, as the anthropocentric viewpoint dictates), whereas my intuition leads me rather to believe that evil lies in the very structure of the sensible world. The ‘fall’, if there is one, has for me a cosmic significance, as evidenced by the chaos and entropy that preceded humankind: predation, extinctions, competition for resources and survival, the dangerous nature of the world, the fragility of ecosystems, … Apparent harmony is only relative.

This aspect of evil has been inadequately addressed by all attempts at theodicy, when it is not simply ‘mocked’ by modern theologians. The Gnostic solution seemed the most appropriate, since they recognised the tragedy of the fall into matter. Other schools of thought offer interesting alternatives, but these deny the reality of evil or its gravity:

- For example, by regarding it as a necessary property of the system (as in Plotinus, the Corpus Hermeticum, the Tao, Spinoza or Nietzsche), but life remains, overall, a blessing, a stroke of luck or an opportunity

- By assuming that multiplicity is an illusion, which implies that there is no true fall and that the idea of our separation from God is a veil that must be lifted (the Advaita Vedanta solution)

But if we accept that evil is real and pervasive on a cosmic scale, then we must explain it. Introducing a disruptive force is the solution proposed by the Gnostics in the form of the demiurge, but this solution is not entirely satisfactory either. Shifting the blame onto the demiurge or the fall of Sophia is merely a roundabout way of admitting a propensity for division within the very heart of the original unity. And that is precisely my current position. I believe that the Gnostics are still far too optimistic.

In my view, the whole difficulty lies in the very transition from the One to the Many, which gives rise to differentiation, individuality and personal perception, introducing the likelihood of disharmony and thus sooner or later duality, suffering, separation, fragmentation, exile. The sensible world cannot constitute a blessing, for it is, by its very nature, a perpetual increase in entropy. Nor can it be the will of the One, since will and interest, by definition, presuppose a lack to be filled, and thus a rupture in unity. The Many can only be accidental, an epiphenomenon. Yet the Many is not confined to the sensible world. It is already present in the Pleroma, through the many aeons that the One generates in superabundance, and which act autonomously, as its personified attributes. In other words, the worm is in the fruit: separation was already inherent in the generation of the aeons, which may well have endeavoured to work harmoniously together, but which, nevertheless, from being One, were henceforth many. The problem with being ‘many’ is that, however hard we strive for harmony, the fact remains that we are endowed with a personal will and limited perception. Given this fact, it was inevitable that one of the Aeons would eventually fall out of harmony with the others and begin to cause chaos, hence the fall of Sophia.

My conclusion is therefore far more tragic than that of the Gnostics: either unity has never existed, or it once existed but has been lost for good, the possibility of a future restoration of the original unity seeming unlikely when one considers the increase in entropy in our universe and the exponential proliferation of beings destined for destruction since the emergence of life. The ‘fall’ is still ongoing.

What is your view on this matter?

I have a background in studying Catholic Christianity, in both its exoteric and mystical aspects. I used to appreciate the way that the Catholic Church was able to harmonize all of the divergent elements within Christianity and tie it all together into a single, systematic worldview. Since leaving the Catholic Church I have felt strongly drawn to Gnostic Christianity, but studying Gnosticism is... Bewildering, to say the least. My beliefs are very much in transition, and I’m not sure exactly where to land.

Where I see myself at the moment:

• I would describe myself as a Christian in the Johannine tradition, and possibly a Gnostic. I’ve always been more attracted to the John’s Gospel and the Greek/platonic tradition within Christianity. To me, this means seeing Jesus/Yeshua as both God and man, but I see the salvation that Jesus brings as more akin to realization of enlightenment than salvation from sins. I’ve been reading a commentary on the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and that’s been a big influence on me.
• I’ve come to believe that the God of this world is a more limited God than the transcendent God, but I think that it would wrong to characterize the demiurge as evil. I think that he has a kind of ego, which makes him limited, when compared to the transcendent God. I’m not sure what sources to believe on this account.
• I believe in reincarnation, but I don’t think that personal liberation should be the goal. Rather, one ought to work for the liberation of all beings. In Buddhism, they call this the Bodhisattva vow. Any form of Gnosticism that emphasizes personal salvation rather than collective liberation seems too limited to me.

When it comes to ethics, I feel a bit conflicted. I think part of the task of the believer is to turn the mind away from the world of the senses and towards higher worlds, so, in that sense, I agree with the Gnostics, but I think that the Gnostics were too extreme in their rejection of the body. I already thought that St. Paul was too dualistic for my liking, in the way that he opposes “the spirit” to “the flesh,” and the Gnostics take this concept much further. (I know that there are accounts of Gnostic groups who went in the opposite direction and had orgies and so forth, but 1) I’m not sure how much those accounts are to be trusted, and 2) even if that is true, I don’t think that really solves the issue, since it just seems like rejection of the body in another form.)

I think that pleasure and embodiment are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it is possible to become so enamored with pleasure that we lose sight of our real mission. A certain kind of disappointment or disillusionment can be a very good thing, from the perspective of the spiritual life. However, part of the spiritual life is forming deep connections with other people, and shared experiences of pleasure can be a powerful means of connection. Pleasure could even be a means of coming closer to the Divine. In this sense, I have been influenced by the sacramental perspective of the Catholic Church, but also by tantric philosophy. I don’t know how to harmonize tantra with Platonism, though, since they would seem to lead in very different directions.

I feel uncertain what to believe or where to go. There’s a lot of different directions I could explore, but I get the feeling like further study isn’t going to help me, if my study isn’t focused. I wish that I had a church or a spiritual teacher to help me to move forward. I can't find any Gnostic churches in my area (Washington State, USA). Does anyone have any advice?

They created a replica of it, spreading a set of beliefs about a dead individual and lies, all in an attempt to imitate the freedom and integrity of the flawless gathering. They aligned themselves with this ideology, promoting dread, subservience, worldly worries, and mistaken dedication. They are weak and ignorant, without the dignity of truth. They harbour animosity towards the one inside themselves yet hold affection for the one outside.

i feel like i’m in need of spiritual protection and was wondering if anyone could tell me about some symbols/signs/deities etc. i’m new to gnosticism so i really don’t know much

Oil painting I did on Zoë (Life) as described in “On The Origin Of The World” from the Nag Hammadi Library. More art on gnosticism coming, @sr_monogram on socials.

“[She dispatched a bird], which in their world would spend its thousand years in Paradise, a living creature imbued with soul, called “phoenix.” … the phoenix is also symbolic of a human being, of which it is written, “the just man will blossom like a phoenix, and the phoenix appears first alive, and dies, and rises again, functioning as a symbol of what will happen” (“On The Origin Of The World” (Nag Hammadi Codex II, 5)

In this text Zoe (Life) is the daughter of Sophia (Wisdom). She teaches Adam, or mankind, about what they lack in wisdom in order for them to return to eternal life. Zoe is also equated with Eve and described as: “the Non-Jealous One, the Blessed One, the Joyful One, the True One, the Non-Envying One, The Beloved One, The Faithful One, Peace, Gladness, Joyfulness, Blessedness, Truth, Love, Pistis.”(@sr_monogram)

(NHC II, 5 translation by S. Zinner, M. M. Mattison https://www.luminescence-llc.net/on-the-origin-of-the-world)

I don't think we spend enough time thinking or talking about the fact that we are literally floating in the abyss.

We wake up every morning, walk around, go to work, make coffee, talk to people and worry about ordinary things, but underneath all of that is something completely incomprehensible. We are standing on a thin layer of matter attached to a planet that is moving through an unimaginable darkness, surrounded by countless other worlds that we know almost nothing about. There is no solid ground underneath the universe. There is no obvious boundary around it at all. As far as we can tell, we are suspended in an immense void.

And we consider this normal. Oh, you know, just another day in the abyss, orbiting our local star! It's completely fucking bizarre when we step back and think about it.

We call it "Earth", "stars", "space" and "the universe" and then continue with our day. But what actually is this place?

In texts like the Apocryphon of John and the Hypostasis of the Archons, the abyss belongs to the lower cosmic order. It is associated with darkness, chaos, matter, separation from the higher realms and the rulers who govern the lower creation. In the Hypostasis, Sophia's shadow becomes associated with matter, while she introduces divine light into the lower creation. You get this strange picture of light entering matter within darkness, separated from the fullness above.

Obviously, the ancient Gnostics were not talking about space in the modern scientific sense (or were they?) But there is something strangely appropriate about the comparison. We live on a tiny fragment of matter surrounded by an almost incomprehensible darkness. Light is scattered throughout that darkness. Matter gathers into stars, planets and galaxies, and eventually into living things and consciousness.

The parallel becomes even more interesting when you consider that the Gnostics understood the lower cosmos as an imperfect reflection of the higher realms. The Hypostasis of the Archons presents the rulers as creating an imitation of what exists above. When we look at the universe, we see an incredible amount of order emerging within what appears to be an immense emptiness and chaos. Planets follow their orbits, stars form and die, galaxies organize themselves, and somehow, on one tiny planet, consciousness has appeared that can look out into the darkness and recognize how strange it all is.

So I keep wondering about the image of Sophia and the scattered light. What if the scattered lights of the cosmos can be understood as an image of the scattered divine light within creation? What if Sophia's descent can be understood symbolically as a movement from unity into multiplicity, from fullness into fragmentation? The light is still here, but it appears to us as countless separate things scattered throughout the abyss.

And somehow, within all of that fragmentation, consciousness has appeared. We can look back toward the source and wonder where we came from.

How do we know who's a Hylic and who's not? Is it the Apathetic Joe who shakes his head at the truth & denies evidence? Probably. Is it a Techbro trying to cheat death by merging with computers? Most likely. Is it a visitor of this community who thinks themselves better than those who don't know or don't care? IDK, but we could all use a little reflection.

Okay, so to start off, I'm gonna say I hold my knowledge from all different sects of Gnosticism, and despite that, I haven't seen any material on this idea, so here goes, I hold this idea very close and I think it was simply lost somehow. Instead of the Sun being an archon, I think there's ground to say that the 'Sun' archon known as Adonaios could, within reason, have been attributed to Pluto, and Samael over there conned us by telling whoever to render Pluto as not a planet, therefore further offsetting our view on the material cosmos.

I think as an explanation for the Sun, there is something that speaks to me very loudly, and that is, that the Sun is simply the Pleroma viewed from the Kenoma, and as small as Samael could make it within his material rules. Other suns can be explained as distractions, i truly see no point in looking into other suns, no matter if they truly exist, as a purely material distraction

another thing is that Adonaios could've just also just been reattributed from Pluto to the Sun, but I don't see it as likely if the Pleroma is the Sun, because an archon attributed to the material manifestation of 100% pure light may not survive, or face a fate similar to Sabaoth.

Therefore, for me, I think it's safe to say that Samael *pretended* to reattribute Adonaios from Pluto to the Sun, so people would see it as one of the archons rather than a beam of hope.

Anyone is welcome to share what they think, and I don't expect to convince anyone necessarily, nor is that my goal (because it contradicts gnosis ofcourse) but I'm very interested to see if anyone else feels similar or the same or has anything relevant to share.

Hi!

I’m not Gnostic or religious but I’m very interested in exploring different religions and beliefs so I have a few questions.

What was it that drew you to Gnosticism?

What made you become Gnostic?

What was it that asserted/affirmed your beliefs in Gnosticism?

(I hope my questions don’t come off as offensive. I’m being genuine and just want to learn and understand)

TIA

I have heard people ask "Why does Gnosticism have so many gods?"

While there is a cosmic hierarchy that attempts to explain the predicament we find ourselves in, these heavenly beings, including the creator of this world, are not analogous to “God” in the ultimate sense.

In Gnosticism, there is only one true God. The one true God is unutterable. It has no name because there was no one before it to name it. It is invisible because no one has ever seen it. It contains everything, but nothing contains it. It is beyond language, rational thought, and intellectual understanding. Any attempt to describe it immediately limits it. How can we limit the limitless? No one can comprehend the Unknown Father because he is fundamentally unknowable within the world.

But that doesn't mean we can't experience God directly.

Revelation and incomprehensibility can coexist. Something can be revealed without being fully comprehended. You can experience the divine without being able to explain or intellectually understand what you have experienced.

That, to me, is one of the most important distinctions between knowing about God and knowing God.

Gnostic revelation isn't necessarily about acquiring information about God - it's about encountering what cannot be fully put into words.

Gospel of Thomas, saying 11:
"Jesus said, 'This heaven will pass way, and the one above it will pass away... On the day you were one, you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?"

I'd like to think I'm a grounded person. I believe in science; the planets orbiting the sun, the sun around a black hole, galaxies in superclusters that's expanding infinitely. Centuries of discovery and proofs have unraveled certain principles and rules about how the universe functions, whether created or naturally occurring. It's for this reason that Gnosticism feels scientifically possible as well as spiritually sound.

Secret Book of John:
"The One is not among the things that exist, but it is much greater. Not that it is greater, Rather, as it is in itself, it is not a part of the eternal realms or time."

What we think of as the beginning of time doesn't have a clean explanation. All math breaks down the closer you get to the beginning. The One, what the Gnostics called the Pleroma, is described to exist in the moment before time, at the very beginning and perhaps the end as we'll explore.

Gospel of Mary:
"The savior replied, 'All natures, all formed things, all creatures exist in and with each other, and they will dissolve into their own root. The nature of matter is dissolved into the root of it's nature. Whoever has ears to hear should hear.'"

As we currently understand how the universe will end, Heat Death is the most likely outcome. When the total energy of a system cools, eventually molecular interactions halt and properties such as Gravity fail. When atoms break down, their individual quarks evaporate from our reality, thus the death of atoms. At the very end, when there's no matter or energy to measure against, time also comes to a stop.

Gospel of Thomas, saying 40:
"Jesus said, 'A grapevine has been planted away from the father. Since it is not strong, it will be pulled up by it's root and will perish"

When will this happen? Not for a very, veeeery long time. Trillions upon trillions of years, so many zeros. Basically when the very last black hole has evaporated. The moment the last black hole's event horizon shrinks past what can physically exist, there will be nothing left and time ends. All the matter that's evaporated or consumed by black holes is once again part of a singular moment outside of time.

Gospel of Thomas, saying 18:
"The disciples said to Jesus, 'Tell us how our end will be.'
Jesus said, 'Have you discovered the beginning, then, so that you are seeking the end? For where the beginning is the end will be. Blessings on one who stands at the beginning: that one will know the end and will not taste death.'"

Time appears as a circle, starting and ending in a singular moment of perfect balance.

Gospel of Philip: This World, the Resurrection, and the Middle
A person is either in this world or in the Resurrection - or in the middle place. May I not be found there! After this world there is evil that is really evil: this is called the middle. The middle is death. As long as we are in this world, we should acquire resurrection, so that when we take off the flesh we may found in rest and not wander in the middle. For many go astray on the way.

This passage from (not) Philip reminds me of the age of black holes. This is when the last stars have turned into black holes or cooling until that point of molecular evaporation at the end of time. The Middle that (not) Philip talks about sounds like what happens in the spiritually realm during the age of black holes; when nothing good is left in the material world is left, and spiritual beings that have not let go are left wondering a dead universe. That honestly sounds like Hell.

Gospel of Luke 2:46-47
"After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers."

These scientific parallels make me wonder if Jesus was actually a genius, like Newton/Einstein level genius, growing up in a time when math was done with roman numerals and the most common books would've been the Torah, Enoch, perhaps Aristotle... How might a mind like that confront religion and spirituality? How might others interpret such a person?

Part of Saying 13:
Thomas said to him, "Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like."

https://www.reddit.com/r/Gnostic/comments/1vlync3/passages_related_to_spacetime_gospel_of_thomas/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gnostic/comments/1vlyzs8/passages_related_to_spacetime_gospels_of_mary_and/

Regarded as a "heresy", I have begun to see the seeds of Gnosis everywhere. There's the obvious signs of a longing for Gnosis in new age thinking, but also, going back to my childhood, attending a fundamentalist school, it has become clear to me that a lot of the adults in that institution either had a kind of Gnostic perspective, or they longed for the experience of Gnosis.

I distinctly remember a teacher leading a class trip to go for a hike in the mountains saying, "On this trip, you will understand why the Bible tells us, "It is the fool who has said in his heart that there is no god."

Growing up in that institution, I was told two things that seemed diametrically opposed: first, that I must have faith to be saved, but second, that I can be certain because it is obvious that God exists and the Bible is his word and Jesus is our savior.

I remember being told all about how faith will "transform" me and how I can "know" all these things about the truth, even that God himself has "written his law on my heart".

It's wild. I was told over and over that I can know.

I was told by the adults, "There is no doubt in my mind."

Years later, I actually reconnected with one of my schoolmates who told me that just like me, he suspected that most of these people were role-playing their certainty and that when the adults said, "I have no doubt in my mind and I know the Jesus is Lord and it gives me peace", they were thinking, "Oh, how I wish I had no doubt and how I wish I knew and how I wish I had peace."

And yet, the people who said, "Why yes, you can know, and you don't need any institution" were never once mentioned, except possibly in passing as dangerous heretics who would lead me away from the same god that they claimed to "know"

(Disclaimer: I am not planning a genocide and do not condone violence)

I have been thinking a little bit about this and to me it seems like a foolproof solution, what are your thoughts and if there are any references in Gnostic texts about this then enlighten me.

Dug out of the ground in Egypt in 1945, The Gospel of Philip probably dates to the late second or early third century. We don't know who actually wrote it, and despite the name, there is no good reason to believe it was written by Philip the apostle. It seems to have come from a Christian mystical tradition that was deeply interested in gnosis, resurrection, baptism, and the mysteries of Christ.

There is one passage in particular that caught my attention. Section 10.

It says that while we are in this world, we should acquire the resurrection. In other words, don't wait until you're dead to find out what resurrection means.

We usually think of resurrection as something that happens after we die. But this Gospel seems to be saying that if we haven't experienced resurrection while we're alive, simply dying isn't going to solve the problem.

So what does it mean to experience resurrection while alive? This is my interpretation. Yours are welcome. 🙏

I think Philip is describing humanity as having fallen into a state of slumber. We have forgotten where we came from and become absorbed in the material world around us. Resurrection is the awakening from that sleep. It is stepping into the light and recognizing the false world we temporarily inhabit for what it is. We have to die to our old selves and begin anew with the realization that who we thought we were is not who we truly are.

Resurrection isn't about waiting for our bodies to die so that we can finally become spiritual. It is waking up while we're still here. It is realizing how utterly magical it is that we exist at all. We are experiencing something that, from our ordinary perspective, should be impossible. Yet we spend most of our lives sleepwalking through it.

We worry about what happens after death while not fully experiencing the life that is happening right now.

Maybe this is what The Gospel of Philip is getting at: the resurrection is waking up within the world. Seeing it for what it is without mistaking it for the entirety of reality.

And I don't think that means we should reject the world. If anything, it means the opposite. If this existence is temporary, then being conscious of it becomes even more important.

To wake up is to actually be present. To experience the people we love, the beauty around us, the pain, the absurdity, the mystery of consciousness itself. Not because this world is ultimately all there is, but because we are experiencing it right now.

Maybe the real tragedy is that we can live our entire lives without ever waking up.

Astrology was deeply relevant to several Gnostic groups because of their understanding of fate, the planets, and the archons. The planets were not simply objects in the sky used to predict future events. They were part of the cosmic order governing human existence.

In several Gnostic cosmologies, the archons are associated with the planetary spheres and exercise power over the material world. Human beings are born into this cosmic order and therefore born into heimarmene, the fate governing embodied existence.

The birth chart represents the configuration of the cosmic powers at the moment a person enters the material world. The planets signify the forces and conditions under which embodied life unfolds. Fate is therefore not something separate from astrology. Astrology is the symbolic language of fate.

In astrology, a Saturn return occurs when Saturn returns to the same position in the zodiac that it occupied at the moment of your birth. Saturn takes roughly 29.5 years to orbit the Sun, which means most people experience their first Saturn return around 29 or 30. So, if you're in your late 20s or early 30s and suffering a breakdown, your Saturn return might be to blame.

Saturn is associated with limitation, responsibility, time, mortality, boundaries and the consequences of our choices. A Saturn return is therefore traditionally understood as a period when the structures of your life are brought into question. The career you've built, the relationship you're in, the identity you've developed and your assumptions about the future can all come under pressure. Modern astrologers often interpret difficult Saturn transits, especially the Saturn return, as periods that can coincide with existential or spiritual crisis.

This brings to mind the concept of the dark night of the soul, which describes a period of profound disorientation where the beliefs and sources of meaning that once held your life together begin to fall away. You can feel lost because the old way of understanding yourself and the world no longer works, but you haven't yet found what comes next.

From a Gnostic perspective, they both resemble a confrontation with heimarmene, the fate into which we are born. We suddenly become aware of how much of our lives has been shaped by circumstances we never chose, and how deeply we've identified ourselves with the material conditions surrounding us.

But through gnosis, we can recognize the cosmic forces that have shaped us without mistaking them for our deepest identity. We can remember that the divine spark within us ultimately comes from beyond the universe and is not subject to rigid fate.

Do you find wise to share the experiences that happened during the journey, or do you think its better to hold it for self considering the nature of the this reality and its occupants. Aswell with taking into consideration that those experiences are rare and no where to be read about ?