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Gnosis Means Direct Knowledge
According to the Old Testament-based religions, direct mystical or spiritual experience was not accessible to ordinary humans. In contrast, the Gnostics' credo was to achieve direct experience of the Mystery whenever possible; each group was looking for intimate, personal experiences with godhead, much like those available through the traditional older Mystery Schools.
Drawing upon ancient Hermetic and Jewish gospels rejected by the canonizers of the Old and New Testaments, they challenged the official Judeo-Christian explanations of a monotheistic FatherGod, human origins, and the destiny of the soul. They felt that a straighter route could be found to reunite humanity and godhead without the interference of clergy or priestly heirarchies. In particular they worshipped and championed Sophia, the Wisdom of God (as mentioned in Genesis) who in the beginning co-created the world with the Father. In their societies, women's roles reflected this greater respect for the feminine. As Dr. Lewis Keizer and Stuart Kaplan remind us, the earliest Tarots show a woman dressed in ecclesiastical garb and named "The Popess." In the Mantegna tarocchi, this image is the person at the top of their "stations of man" series, the person who is closest to God, representative of humanity's highest development, and clearly a woman! In the mid-1400s, that is a powerful statement.
Pessimist vs. Optimist Gnostics
Another of Gnosticism's basic beliefs was internally disputed for centuries and is an ongoing philosophical and spiritual debate to this day. This split is well defined in the following quote from In Search of the Primordial Tradition and the Cosmic Christ by Father John Rossner, Ph.D., beginning on page 112:
"There is an essential distinction which must be made between 'optimistic' and 'pessimistic' forms of pre-Christian esotericism. The 'optimistic' gnosis views the whole world as good, as a divine and living world because it is animated by the divine effluvia, and capable of being activated by man as a co-Creator with God and as a priest of Nature. In this world, man's function is not to 'escape the world' but to awaken and activate persons, places, and things in Nature to become 'temples of the Divine Spirit.' Man himself develops gnosis in order to 'become or re-become a god,' in order to 'know God' in the existential sense. Like the 'magician' or 'theurgist' in the iconography of the Egyptian tarot card, man is to 'bring down' the divine power and light in order to impregnate and fill the objects of the physical world with their appropriate form of divinity.
"The 'optimistic' form of gnosis may be identified with the ancient Egyptian 'religion of the world,' according to Frances Yates [see her book Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition pp. 20-38]. It was such a positive 'Hermetic' conception of a good, God-given creation (which is to be redeemed and divinized rather than discarded) which indeed may have provided the Egyptian background of both the Hebraic and Mosaic concepts of the creation in Genesis, and a source for the classical Greek metaphysics of Pythagoras and Plato. This earlier Egyptian understanding of gnosis pre-dated the later Hellenistic, world-denying 'religion of Gnosticism' in the early Christian era."
A few paragraphs later, on page 113, Rossner writes that "during the Renaissance, Ficino and Giordano Bruno believed that this 'optimistic' variety of an earlier Egyptian 'proto-gnosticism' had found its way into original Mosaic tradition, and into the works of the New Testament, in the positive metaphysical philosophies of Jesus, John (the author of the 4th Gospel) and Paul. It also found its way into the Neo-Platonic Hermeticists of the early Christian centuries."
When we remember that the Tarots of Etteilla are designed to represent this very same strain of optimistic Hermetic Gnosis expressed in The Divine Pymander, we have to again give respect where it is due and return to studying his fascinating Tarots in a new and deeper light.
In contrast to the optimist Gnostics of various stripes, a spectrum of negative thinkers felt that this world of matter and time/space is a prison instead of an Eden. Those Gnostics viewed incarnation as "the fall," believing it to be a punishment. Others saw our immersion in matter as the result of a war between good and evil in heaven.
Some of these groups refused to reproduce, believing that in being fertile they would be playing into the hands of our captors, the fallen angels. The practice of sexual union has the effect of enticing other souls to leave heaven for this captivity below, an undesirable outcome for these world-denying Gnostics. Among the groups of pessimist Gnostics there were some who were entirely ascetic, choosing to stay maximally detached from the Fallen God's temptations, which would include the entire roster of earthly delights.
Other strains of Gnostics believed that the soul would not be allowed to leave this plane of existence until it had been through every experience available to humans. This belief encouraged all forms of license and excess, the unhealthy effects of which get this group more often classed with the pessimists than the optimists. Their motto was "eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you may die."
the bible alone wont do it (contain all the thruths ? )
In Support of His Publications, Solely His Writings, As God's Divine Channel, The Food At The Proper Time, The Only Way For A Person To "Be In The Light"And Obtain The Truth. The Bible Alone Would Not Do.
Originally posted by senrak
CoZ,
In as much as I didn't understand the vast majority of your post....let me say only one thing (albeit important) The "G" does not, nor has it ever meant "Gnosis" (although I personally like the idea) It means "Geometry"
Originally posted by AlexKennedy
Originally posted by senrak
CoZ,
In as much as I didn't understand the vast majority of your post....let me say only one thing (albeit important) The "G" does not, nor has it ever meant "Gnosis" (although I personally like the idea) It means "Geometry"
And here in Canada it means "God."