Gnosis or Not Gnosis?

We Gnostic Christians are in a very funny position as far as Gnostics and Christians go, because we fall into neither camp and we fall into both camps. And this is what I mean. I realize that the last couple of episodes have been very, what people would call, Christian, except the Christians don't call it Christian. It's a funny, funny position to be in. Those of us who call ourselves Gnostics believe in the Father. We believe in the Aeons of the Fullness. We believe that one of the Aeons “fell” out of the Fullness and, for most Gnostics, they call that Aeon Sophia, and Sophia is considered to be a female character. For those of us who are interested in the Tripartite Tractate we call that fallen Aeon Logos. And, Logos is neither female nor male, because in the Gnosticism according to the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi, there are no females and males. Or, there may be females and males, but their gender is not important. Gender is irrelevant. The folks who follow what is called Sethian Gnosticism, as I understand it—who prefer to follow Sophia rather than Logos—believe in a system of male-female bonding. They're called syzygies, and for every male Aeon there's a female Aeon and they are like a married couple. And that between the two of them there is balance. Well, now that's kind of a funny thing at this point in our social development, don't you think? All of this idea that genders are unimportant or that you can change the gender you were born with—this transgenderism that's going on in society. Now, I am a female. I was born a female. I remain a female. And yet I have always felt within myself that gender was unimportant. It's irrelevant other than our reproductive functions. But as far as my actions on the social stage, as far as my actions on the academic stage, as far as the way I read and interpret material, gender has nothing to do with that. I'm a Libertarian. I believe in freedom and personal responsibility and liberty to be able to make the decisions we want to make. I don't believe in power and control. I think that power and control, particularly centralized authority, is demiurgic because that's the way the Demiurge operates. The Demiurge is the puppet master. It has always been said, even in conventional Christianity, that every person must come to God for themselves. Every person must make their own decisions regarding whom they will follow, and I don't think that has anything to do with gender. I think it has to do with the Demiurge versus the Father, or the Son, or the Fullness, or Logos. Bob Dylan had a song—remember back in his evangelical phase? The lyrics had to do with you have to choose somebody. “It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you're gonna have to choose somebody.” That is a black and white decision that is a bilateral decision. You're either going this way or you're going that way, you're going in or you're going out, you're going up or you're going down. Now, the culture that we're living in, it's mostly demiurgic. It's mostly being controlled by centralized authority. And whether that is political, corporate, media led, or religion led, it is centralized authority that takes away your freedom of choice. It says, No. You have to believe this. You have to believe the way we believe. And if you don't, you're an outsider. You're bad. That isn't the way true choice works. That's not the way liberty works. Liberty says, Here are all the facts of all the matter, and you can choose this or choose that, or choose that. That is up to each and every person. And indeed, we all are responsible for our own karma, for our own lives. We can't shuffle that responsibility onto another person or onto a religion or onto a corporation, or onto a political system. We have to make our own decision for ourselves, because it's only us that's going up or down. So, the past couple of episodes have been very Christian. If you're not familiar with Christ and Jesus, you're gonna think it's very Christian. Here, I'll read you a letter that I got off of Substack this week from one of my paid supporters. He has unsubscribed. He is no longer paying to listen to the Gnostic Reformation. And here's what he says: "I've really enjoyed getting your take on gnosticism. What I’ve enjoyed most is just how different your perspective is from my own—mine, alas, being increasingly un-Christianized and more focused on Sophia. Of course, to paraphrase Shaw’s quote about economists, If you laid 1000 gnostics end to end, they would not reach a conclusion. Such is the nature of heretics, I think. Gnosis is, imo, different for each of us. It was my honor to help support your work for a time. Best wishes!" So that was very kind of him. He said it in as kind a manner as he could say. And yet it points out the divide within Gnosticism of those who consider themselves followers of Sophia and those who consider themselves to be Christianized. So he's rejecting the Gnostic Reformation because it revolves around Christ’s redemption. Now here's another one, also from Substack. And this listener says: "Another inspirational podcast Cyd. Please keep them coming. It seems like such simplicity , but in your introduction the words to " fear not, we are known and we are loved " when taken to heart and truly believed states such a significant thing. That belief can cut through much darkness with the purest light—that we are all known , are equally loved , and all are destined for the journey home to be in the fullness. Blessings." Now, these are both people that are following a Gnostic path, and one accepts the notion of assistance directly from the Fullness in this our fallen state in the material world and the other one doesn't. What I have noticed about the followers of Sophia is that they are also into things like astrology, alchemy, magic, good magic, of course—only for the good. I'm not into any of those things. Those are old systems from antiquity, and they're very occult and very hidden. Occult means hidden. Now, you tell me if the Father wants to be known, and was this not the purpose of the originating consciousness breaking into individual points of view that would then have their own will and their own experiences, and then feed that information back upstream to the Father? That's the basic flowing out and flowing in of consciousness—to the Originating Source, out from the Original Source--breaking up into individual points of view having a variety of experiences and then that information coming back up to the Originating Source. It always says in the Bible, for example, that the Father wanted to be known.** The Christians think that Jesus of Nazareth was the Father walking around on Earth—was the Son of God who fully reflected the Father, and that he wanted to be known. “If you know me, you know the Father,” he said (John 8:19). And the fractal archetype of Jesus of Nazareth walked around his region preaching and teaching about the Father and about virtue and leading a virtuous life and the importance of aligning yourself with the virtuous forces and distancing yourself from the vice. He didn't hide himself away in a cloister and study manuscripts and write manuscripts, and then hide them deep in the darkest recesses, like the Vatican basement. He didn't do that. He spoke openly and taught. And he said, We are to love each other and we're to love ourselves. And we are to love God. This is the highest commandment. This is all that we need to do: Love, love, and love. And then he exemplified that love by loving people he didn't know; by loving his enemies; by forgiving his enemies; by healing people; by feeding people. The occultists study their gnosis in labyrinthine ways. They believe that the gnosis was meant to be hidden. They believe that you have to learn, learn, learn, and go deeper, deeper, deeper into secret societies and into secret libraries to pull out this gnosis and study it and learn it and master it.… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cydropp.substack.com/subscribe