GNOSTICISM

What Is Gnosticism?

Gnosis is a Greek noun which means "knowledge" or "insight." It is often used for personal knowledge compared with intellectual knowledge). A related term is the adjective gnostikos (cognitive) a reasonably common adjective in Classical Greek.

Gnosticism, being a form of esoteric knowledge, is considered to be a form of occult knowledge (occult meaning "hidden"). Gnosticism does not focus on concepts of sin and repentance, but on the concept of illusion and enlightenment.

Before you research on Gnosticism, you need to put aside perceptions of what you have learnt in the past.

True Gnosticism is:

Not the Tanakh (Old Testament)
Not the Torah
Not the Talmud
Not the Kabbalah
Not Roman Catholicism
Not (Protestant) Christianity
Not the New Testatment
Not Paulism (modern Christianity that is based more on the teachings of Paul than Jesus)
Not Jesusism (basically a Jesus fan club)
Not Macionsim (Marcion's version of Gnosticism based on teachings of Paul)
Not Christian Gnosticism

The Gnostic teachings are what the representative of the Pleroma, the avatar Isa the Kristos, taught the world, before it was branded as heretical by the Roman Catholic palpacy, and corrupted, hijacked into their own version of Jesus Christ.

The Nag Hammadi Library

Nag Hammadi is a city and markaz in Upper Egypt, located on the west bank of the Nile in the Qena Governorate, about 80km north-west of Luxor.

Until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices in 1945, the Gnostic view of early Christianity had largely been forgotten. The teachings of Gnostic Christianity—vilified especially since they were declared heretic by orthodox Christianity in the fourth century—had been virtually erased from history by the early church fathers, their gospels banned and even burned to make room for the view of Christian theology outlined in the canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

The Nag Hammadi library (also known as the Chenoboskion Manuscripts and the Gnostic Gospels) is a collection of early Christian and Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945.

Thirteen leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by a local farmer named Muhammed al-Samman. The writings in these codices comprise 52 mostly Gnostic treatises, but they also include three works belonging to the Corpus Hermeticum and a partial translation/alteration of Plato's Republic. In his introduction to The Nag Hammadi Library in English, James Robinson suggests that these codices may have belonged to a nearby Pachomian monastery and were buried after Saint Athanasius condemned the use of non-canonical books in his Festal Letter of 367 A.D. The Pachomian hypothesis has been further expanded by Lundhaug & Jenott (2015, 2018) and further strengthened by Linjamaa (2024). In his 2024 book, Linjamaa argues that the Nag Hammadi library was used by a small intellectual monastic elite at a Pachomian monastery, and that they were used as a smaller part of a much wider Christian library.

The contents of the codices were written in the Coptic language. The best-known of these works is probably the Gospel of Thomas, of which the Nag Hammadi codices contain the only complete text. After the discovery, scholars recognized that fragments of these sayings attributed to Jesus appeared in manuscripts discovered at Oxyrhynchus in 1898, and matching quotations were recognized in other early Christian sources. Most interpreters date the writing of the Gospel of Thomas to the second century, but based on much earlier sources. The buried manuscripts date from the 3rd and 4th centuries.

The Nag Hammadi codices are now housed in the Coptic Museum in Cairo, Egypt.

The Celestial Realm:

The Monad

The supreme being is known as the Monad, the One, the Absolute, Aiōn Teleos (the Perfect Aeon, αἰών τέλεος), Bythos (Depth or Profundity, Βυθός), Proarchē (Before the Beginning, προαρχή), Hē Archē (The Beginning, ἡ ἀρχή), the Ineffable Parent, and/or the primal Father. The Monad is the high source of the Pleroma, the region of light.

The Apocryphon of John, gives the following description:

The Monad is a monarchy with nothing above it. It is he who exists as God and Father of everything, the invisible One who is above everything, who exists as incorruption, which is in the pure light into which no eye can look. "He is the invisible Spirit, of whom it is not right to think of him as a god, or something similar. For he is more than a god, since there is nothing above him, for no one lords it over him. For he does not exist in something inferior to him, since everything exists in him. For it is he who establishes himself. He is eternal, since he does not need anything. For he is total perfection.

The Pleroma

The heavenly Pleroma is the center of divine life, a region of light "above" (the term is not to be understood spatially) our world, occupied by spiritual beings known as Aeons.

The Aeons

From this primordial source, a series of Emanations, or Aeons, emerged. These Aeons manifest in male-female pairs called Syzygies, collectively form the Pleroma, or 'Fullness' of the divine. This concept emphasizes that the Aeons are not separate from the divine but are symbolic representations of its attributes.

The Aeons descends through a series of stages, gradations, worlds, or hypostases, becoming progressively more material and embodied. In time it will turn around to return to the One (Epistrophe), retracing its steps through spiritual knowledge and contemplation.

Barbelo The Aeon

Barbelo refers to the first emanation of the Monad. Barbelo is often depicted as a supreme female principle, the single passive antecedent of creation in its manifold. This figure is also variously referred to as Anthropos the 'Mother-Father' (hinting at her apparent androgyny), 'The Triple Androgynous Name', or 'The Eternal Aeon'.

Sophia The Aeon

The name Sophia (Greek for "wisdom") refers to the final emanation of God, the youngest of the Aeons.

Sophia is identified with as the Anima-Mundi or "world-soul", as in an attempt to to emanate without her co-partner Syzygy, Sophia created the Demiurge.

After cataclysmically falling from the Pleroma, Sophia's fear and anguish of losing her life (just as she lost the light of the One) caused her confusion and longing to return to it. Because of these longings, matter (Greek: hyle) and soul (Greek: psyche) accidentally come into existence.

The Astral Realm:

The Demiurge

When Sophia attempted to emanate without her co-partner Syzygy, the Demiurge came into existence, who in turn brings about the creation of materiality. The Demiurge has many names, and among them are Yaldabaoth, Yahweh, Saklas, and Samael. He was also known as Rex Mundi (King of the World) and sometimes conflated with Satan.

In the Apocryphon of John, the Demiurge declares that he has made the world by himself:

Now the archon ["ruler"] who is weak has three names. The first name is Yaltabaoth, the second is Saklas ["fool"], and the third is Samael ["blind god"]. And he is impious in his arrogance which is in him. For he said, 'I am God and there is no other God beside me,' for he is ignorant of his strength, the place from which he had come.

The Demiurge is often depicted as a (sometimes winged) serpent with a lion's head. This creature is exiled outside the Pleroma; in isolation, and thinking itself alone, it believed that he is the Creator God. It then created the material world.

For clarification purposes, let us call the "God" of the Bible as "The Demiurge God" to differentiate from the Monad being the "True God".

The Archons

The Demiurge created the Archons, in an attempt to mirror the Monad & the Aeons.

The Demiurge created the Archons for the sole purpose of serving him, and to control the material world.

The Demiurge was later became known to the world as "God" (of the Bible) and the Archons were known as "angels".

The Material Realm:

Adam & Eve

The Demiurge and his Archons then created the first Man in the form of a golem. Angelic beings were subsequently tricked into entering the golem bodies with the promise of material pleasures, unknowing to them that the price would be decay & death, and also forgetting their spiritual origins.

The Demiurge and the Archons later raped Eve, and thus Abel & Cain were born.

Transmission Of The Pneuma

In an attempt to redeem herself, the Aeon Sophia secretly breathed the the Pneuma (Divine Spark, also known as the Divine Breath, Spirit, or Soul) into Man, thus giving mankind the opportunity to regain their spiritual status if they choose to strive towards enlightenment.

Afterwhich , Adam & Eve had their 3rd child, Seth, who was the true firstborn of Adam with Eve. As Seth was the offspring of Adam after receiving the Pneuma, It is for this reason that Gnostics are also called Sethians.