Excerpts from JLL Metahistory.org Lexicon:

Gnosticism: is notoriously difficult to define. In 1966 an entire conference was convened in Messina, Italy, solely for that purpose, but it produced no lasting result. Having catalogued no less then twenty-seven definitions of Gnosis, and added eight or ten of my own, I can attest that no single definition is adequate, for it takes a range of approaches to understand this unique religious system.

For a concise initial definition of Gnostic spirituality, I propose: the way of knowing God through the divine intelligence endowed in humanity by God. The famous counsel of the Pythian oracle at Delphi, “Know Thyself” might be expanded into a formula for Gnosis: “Know that within thyself which is divine, and through it, come to know Divinity”. The full array of notions associated with Gnosticism requires a term-by-term analysis of seven definitions that run into each other:

GNOSIS. The word means simply “knowledge,” but of a special kind. It derives from the
root gno-, “to know, cognize, discern”. This Greek verb-root matches the Sanskrit jna-, which carries the same meaning. In Buddhism prajnais the “supreme discernment” of the true nature of reality. Likewise, Gnosis is the knowing of what is true and real in the ultimate sense. Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1965) gives: “immediate knowledge of spiritual truth”, contrasted to mere belief, unquestioning faith, and blind acceptance of doctrines prescribed by authorities. In short, Gnostic spirituality is an anti-authoritarian path based on first-hand experience of Divinity. It encourages an intuitive, i.e., direct, experiential, approach to God. It assumes the possibility of revelations from beyond the human realm, but it requires cognitive training to assess these revelations. Gnosis is the yoga of intellect that unifies far-seeing mental- mystical vision with the wisdom of the body. Developing the hidden powers of the mind/body link to reach beyond the preset limits of human knowing is the predilection of

GNOSTICISM. This is a term in use only since around 1750. The -ism indicates a label invented by scholars. Gnosticism in this sense is the historical profile of the Pagan religious movement, and Gnosis for the method that uniquely distinguishes the members of that movement. Gnosis is both a methodical discipline and the superior insight acquired through that discipline. Gnosticism is known through writings produced in the period when it clashed with Christianity, so there was initially a tendency to assume that Gnosis (the method) did not exist before that time. Most scholars now reject this view, although no scholar has identified with confidence the remote pre-Christian origins of

GNOSTIC RELIGION. This is what Gnosticism really was in its own time, on its own terms: a Pagan religious movement of deep and ancient origins. Its connection to the Mystery Religions known to have existed for thousands of years all over the ancient world will be demonstrated in several chapters. Testimony from early Christians who opposed Gnostic religion, as well as from Pagan philosophers and historians who were sympathetic to it, indicates that its ultimate origins were Asian. Close and vivid parallels between Gnosticism and Buddhism seem to converge in Bon Po, an Asian wisdom tradition dating to 18,000 BCE according to a recently revealed secret oral tradition. Thus, Gnostic religion may have existed for millennia before it was turned into

GNOSTIC HERESY, as Gnostic teachings were called by those who opposed them. Heresy is about having options. Gnosticism was made into a heresy — i.e., something to be rejected as false or perverted — because it presented a set of clear options to the belief template of Christianity. In the literal sense, to be heretical means “able to choose for oneself.” The first proponents of Christianity wanted to impose their view unilaterally on the entire world, so they could not tolerate any competition. Gnosticism challenged emergent Christian doctrines with a range of opposing views. For instance, Gnosticism took ignorance, rather than sin, to be the fundamental problem facing humanity. In large measure, the persuasion of Christian ideology depends on the sense of being a sinner, someone who needs to be saved. Had the teachings of Gnostic heresy become widely known and accepted, the Christian plan for salvation might have collapsed before it got to square one. There was another threat, as well, for Gnosticism did not merely contradict and invalidate Christian doctrines, point blank. In some cases, it offered a different way of stating those doctrines. Most importantly, it presented an alternative view of salvation that came to be formulated in what may be called

GNOSTIC CHRISTIANITY. This is the set of views found in some Gnostic texts from Nag Hammadi that present other ways to state Christian doctrines, rather than flat-out refutations of those doctrines. Gnostic religion existed for millennia, but Gnostic Christianity arose between 200 BC and 400 AD in response to the heady brew of messianic and apocalyptic impulses that were fermenting in Asia Minor, Egypt and Palestine. In the melee of the times, attempts were made to reconcile or even merge Gnosis with Judaeo-Christian doctrines. Some texts from Nag Hammadi were written with the intent to portray the Christian savior, Jesus Christ, as a Gnostic master, an illuminated sage, but other texts are clearly non-Christian and even blatantly anti- Christian.

The “soft view” of Gnostic heresy highlights the former documents, sometimes called “Gnostic Gospels” to conflate them with the New Testament. It favors reconciling Gnostic views with Christian orthodoxy, thus producing a better, kinder, more enlightened, planet-friendly and feminist-slanted version of Christianity. In the “hard view” Gnosis cannot and ought not be reconciled with Christian faith. Essentially and originally, Gnosis is Pagan. Gnostic Christianity is Pagan religion adapted to an alien or extraneous scheme. Scholars meticulously distinguish between pre-Christian, anti-Christian, non-Christian and Christianized texts in the complete inventory of surviving Gnostic literature known to scholars as the

GNOSTIC COPTIC LIBRARY. This consists of the thirteen Nag Hammadi Codices (NHC), comprising fifty-odd documents, and three preceding independent finds: the Berlin, Bruce and Askew Codices. Few of these texts are complete but there is, amazingly, enough extant first-hand material to reconstruct the essential Gnostic philosophy. For reasons no scholar can explain, all of this literature appears in Coptic translations of lost Greek originals. Coptic is a made-up language that emerged in the first centuries of the Christian Era in Egypt. Used primarily for monastic libraries, it draws upon the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and Greek loan-words. Unlike Greek, a language whose grammatical structure permits elaborate phrasing, Coptic is elementary to the point of bluntness, yet it is not without subtleties, either. Both Greek and Coptic terms figure in the special terminology used by Gnostics to explain error, ignorance, deception and the problem of guidance.

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World-Denial – Term commonly used by scholars of religion for the belief that the material world is an inferior realm, or even a downright evil place, contrasted to a heavenly zone or transmundane dimension where the human soul is believed to originate, and to which he may return. In describing world-denial, scholars often use analogies such as: earthly life is like a prison from which we must escape, matter is a dense and lifeless envelope that binds the soul to darkness and ignorance, the human body is a tomb from which we must be resurrected, the world is a vale of tears but on death we may go to a better place.

In doing so, they invariably cite classical sources and religious texts that also present this analogy, either directly or by inference. The complex of beliefs implied in world-denial is relatively clear. This message is life-negating, and can obviously be spun in some very destructive ways, but it also casts a glimmer of hope, and it carries an explicit command: Look beyond this world, for there is a better place. In the perspective of metahistory, world-denial is a stumbling-block, an extremely problematic issue, because metahistory relies on Gnostic ideas for some essential criteria and guidelines, and Gnosticism has invariably been accused of world- denial. The instances of this imputation in scholarly writing and research are too numerous to cite. They are everywhere, for the assumption that Gnostics embraced world-denial is endemic to religious studies. It is difficult, or almost impossible, to access and assess Gnostic materials without having this filter imposed: one assumes at the outset that Gnosticism is a philosophy of world-denial. Yet I would submit that this assumption is wrong. Here I must take a stand and plant myself firmly on a three-legged stool. I base my position on three arguments:

  • one, the imputation of world-denial to Gnostics is disinformation spread by their opponents, the Church Fathers;
  • two, Gnostic materials, taken on balance, do not exhibit a saturation of world-denial elements strong enough to warrant viewing it as a predominant feature; and
  • three, Gnostics were Pagan mystics devoted to the Magna Mater, the Earth Mother, and so they could not have detested the physical world.

This is a Lexicon entry and not a full-blown essay, so I will try to set out each of these arguments in a concise manner.

One

“In the Gnostic view, as in the authorized Christian, the world of nature is seen as corrupt, whereas in the pagan mysteries it was known as divine.” (Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology, p. 145)

This quote is extremely valuable because it both states the imputation of world-denial and presents the evidence for refuting it. Campbell does not intend to refute it, of course. He goes along with the misrepresentation, lumping Gnosticism with Christianity. The latter is, by its own admission, a religion of world-denial. Even though the Christian is dedicated to good works in this world, the aim is to be rewarded in a better world. Even though we suffer in this world, suffering makes us better people, and the better we become the better our chances of going to heaven, etc. These are trite but totally apt examples of “christian doublethink,” as Mary Daly
(Gyn/Ecology) calls it.

Due to the split-mind attitude produced by the dichotomy of material versus spiritual, doublethink is inevitable, and so is projection. This mechanism is well-known in modern psychology. The splitting off of negative or repressed elements of the psyche is always attended by their projection on the other. Christianity is so loaded with schizophrenic binds, it lavishly fosters projection, diabolization of the Other. This occured early in the rise of the “One True Faith,” with the result that early Christians projected their world-denial on Gnostics, their arch- enemies. The Church Fathers falsely represented Gnostics as world-haters, and the label stuck.

Two

I have dedicated 35 years of my life to Gnostic studies. My research indicates that, taken on balance, Gnostic materials do not show a strong proponderance of elements expressing world- denial. Yes, there are passages in the NHL that are explicitly and inarguably world-negating. But the nature of the surviving Gnostic materials, derivative and fragmentary as it is, does not warrant a wholesale characterization of world-denial to Gnostic thought. That is just too simplistic.

In 1996 religious historian Michael Allen Williams published Rethinking ‘Gnosticism’ in which he challenges, and convincingly overturns, the stock imputation of world-denial. Williams’ aim is to “dismantle” the semantic category of Gnosticism, which he, like Karen King and other experts, consider to be useless. Williams writes:

Among the greatest obstacles in the way of a satisfactory understanding [of Gnosticism] are precisely those handy doctrinal abstractions about gnostic “anticosmic hatred of the body” on which we have learned to rely. The familiar cliches about “gnostic hatred of,” “contempt for,” “hostility to” the body fail completely as interpretations of what these sources overall have to say about the question. (p. 136)

Although I would argue for developing a coherent description of Gnosticism on its own terms (see my Lego Method of Gnostic scholarship), rather than scrapping the term, I am immensely grateful for Williams’ work. If the category of Gnosticism really ought be discarded, it is precisely because all we know, and assume to know, about the Gnostic world-view is so tainted with the disinformation and projections imposed on it for centuries, that it is virtually useless. This is Williams’ conclusion, and it is also my second position.

Three

The quote from Campbell asserts that “in the pagan mysteries it [the world of nature] was known as divine.” In my view of Gnosticism, widely developed through the site, I propose that
the gnostokoi, “those with special and superior knowledge,” were identical with the telestes, the initiate-teachers who directed the Mystery Schools. If this were the case, Gnostic materials can best be evaluated by putting them in the context of the Pagan Mysteries, the actual setting from which they emerged. Scholars positively refuse to make this connection, however.

There are rare exceptions, however. Writing in 1900, G. R. S. Mead noted that Gnostic materials “are found to preserve elements from the mystery-traditions of antiquity in greater fullness than we find elsewhere.” (The Gospels and the Gospel, p. 210) A hundred years later, Elaine Pagels, speaking about the emphasis on “the mysteries of sexuality, death and transcending death” in the mystery cults of antiquity, is still insisting that “I don’t see any evidence of those in the texts that we found.” (“What Was Lost Is Found,” interview in Secrets of the Code, edited by Dan Burstein, p. 104) I could make a case for Gnostic materials being saturated with these elements. It all depends on which passages one cites, and how one patches them together (my “Lego method”). If scholars do not see the deep compatibility of Gnostic materials with the Mysteries, it is due to selective blindness, or informed denial, but not to lack of evidence.

I could elaborate this phase of my argument at length, but I will limit myself to one outstanding point. At the least, I consider it to be outstanding, mainly because it is so obvious, so self- evident.

Modern scholars and early Christian opponents of Gnosticism agree that the Mysteries were universally dedicated to the Magna Mater, the great Mother. In Gnostic cosmology the Goddess Sophia falls from the Pleroma (the extra-terrestrial company of Gods) and becomes transformed into the earth. Sophia is literally incarnated as the planet we inhabit, Gaia. Now, it is self-evident that Gaia is identical to the Magna Mater, the embodied Sophia, and it is equally self-evident that any religion dedicated to this divinity could not be world-negating. Gnostics who regarded the terrestrial Sophia as the central redemptive figure in their cosmology could not possibly have despised the natural world and the human body.

Just in closing, to support the third leg of my argument, here is a quote from modern Gnostic Stephen Hoeller:

“The Gnostics did not necessarily reject the actual earth itself, which they recognized as a screen upon which the Demiurge of the mind projects his deceptive system. To the extent that we find a condemnation of the world in Gnostic writings, the term is inevitably kosmos, or this aeon, and never the word ge (earth), which they regarded as neutral, if not outright good.” (The Gnostic Jung, p. 15)

Certainly the greatest obstacle to comprehending what Gnosticism was about is not lack of evidence, invoked by Pagels, but lack of experience. From Hoeller’s interpretation we understand that Gnostics detected the projection of an alien mind, a Demiurgic screening force, upon the natural world. They indicated the operation of what science fiction author Philip K. Dick called “a two-source hologram.” We see nature through a filter, and what Gnostics rejected was the false impression produced by the filter (our mental conditioning, including beliefs that alienate us from our true potential as humans), not the mysterious, life-sustaining world upon which it was projected. This distinction cannot be grasped, however, if we do not enter into the living experience of the Gnostic seers. The concept of world-denial is tricky and sticky, like a tar-baby. The direct awareness of the dualism inherent to our perception of the world, not to the world itself, is an experiential test that few scholars would accept to undergo, and even fewer could pass.

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More information:

Nemeta.org Sophianic School of Arts and Sciences

John Lamb Lash book: Not In His Image