I delved into Gnosticism at the proper age and condition, young, foolish and strong. I learned much that has been ingrained in me ever since, and I let it go. It formed a background music to the actions of my soul in this world. Recently, in a string of events too unfathomable to even want to describe, it came back to me.
Let me open this thread with a piece of dialogue between Parodites and myself at Midnight.
“[P]hilosophy requires a new Eleusis. Hecate-worship was the oldest, then the Orphic cult, then the Eleusinian mystery, the Mystical Christianity and Kabbalah, then the Alexandrian combination of it all in the Gnostic sects, etc. A lot of my recent work has been on uncovering these Greek rites and how they were inter-related and organized in a wider mythical-psychic narrative intimately connected to the preservation of a philosophical instinct, the daemon, through the generations. One that mythic schema is recovered, it can be used to found a new Eleusis.”
“Yes.
I have even instinctively known this at the outset of my philosophical studies
and weirdly, the orgiastic failures of todays pop culture are a spasmodic expression of the necessity of e new Eleusis
But … It seems some stuff would have to transpire, or rather, is perhaps about to transpire - the society right now would basically have to be transformed by, and as, as a ground to, but also grounded by, the invention of a new Eleusis -
Of course this is what Jim Morrison was on about
His frustration was that he didn’t get to see the real cataclysm”
[i]“Because it is the Operator, because it is the Giver of Life Bearing Fire, because it filleth the Life-producing bosom of Hecate; and it instilleth into the Synoches the enlivening strength of Fire, endued with mighty Power.”
“From Him leap forth the Amilicti, the all-relentless thunders, and the whirlwind receiving Bosoms of the all-splendid Strength of Hecaté Father-begotten; and He who encircleth the Brilliance of Fire; And the Strong Spirit of the Poles, all fiery beyond.”[/i]
“Yes the Amilicti refers to the three faces of Hekate and also the triple division of Paternal Intellect, Maternal Creatrix (hecate) and the third, the combined male-female Hermaphprodtic demiurge that artistically fashions the ideas of the paternal intellect by impregnating and giving birth through the maternal creatrix.
Then the Demiurge’s creation- the World, gives rise to attendant “Teletarchs” (they correspond to fallen aeons in Gnosticism) that help to perfect material reality as elemental powers called upon through magickal means.”
“By synthesizing and recovering how all these systems fit together; Hekataics, Orphics, Chaldeans and Eleusinians and Gnostics, etc. I essentially call upon my own Gods; metadeities representing multiple corresponds within these systems. The Orphic Teletarchs are correspondent with the Gnostic fallen aeons- the archons, which are correspond with etc. etc.
multiple correspondents.”
“Another correspondence: The Orphics had 4 levels of Being just like the Kabbalists. For Kabbalah, it is Atziluth, Briah, Yetzirah and Assiah; for Orphics it is the Paternal Depth containing the first-mind, the Second level containing the Iynges, Synoches and Teletarchs, the third level containing the flower of fire and elemental powers, and the fourth being physical reality.”
“And each level expresses a triad of powers, with the paternal depth having essentially what in Kabbalah is the divine triad.”
“Yes, it is related to Zoroastrianism, a religion of fire. They divide creative power into the invisible fire of the paternal depth, and the visible fire that comes from Hecate’s womb, which the Demiurge steals like Prometheus and uses to create the world. The perfection and redemption of physical reality involves returning the fire to its source in the paternal depth, just as Kabbalists seek to return the zohar or divine light back to its source.”
“So would the idea be to return it to the paternal depth while leaving it operational as the basis of the world?
Like completing the circuity?”
“No, Orphics are more Gnostic in that they take this process of return as involving the apocalypse and end of physical reality, whereas Kabbalah treats physical reality as not something inherently imperfect.”
"By the way Crowley opens his Little Essays Toward Truth with a quote he attributes to Zoroaster:
The Mind of the Father
riding on the subtle guiders
which glitter with the inflexible tracings
of relentless fire."
““whereas Kabbalah treats physical reality as nothing something inherently imperfect.” Thats not the case in general for the Kabbalah - the school in which I operate holds that Malkuth belongs on the throne of Binah
That is, that in Assiah the divine will needs to be realized
as Kingdom. This relates to the retrieval of Shekinah”
“I mean that the corruption of physical reality is due to the shattering of the vessels of light, not an inherent nothingness of reality as Gnostics take it, and that by restoring these vessels, Kabbalah aims to recreate the Garden of Eden and reinvest physis with its place in the greater divine scheme.”
“Ah yes, precisely.”
“Orphics and Gnostics believe that the Creation itself was a mistake that must be corrected by ceasing to exist. They think the true God resides in that paternal depth silently and never created anything.
And that all of this is the work of the Demiurge who stole the great fire for his own designs in trying to challenge the true god.”
“I see that as a less noble tradition.”
“So while these systems are highly correspondent- they are not exact correspondences.”
“And also less elegant
no idea they are rather antithetical in their valuing
but still they use the same magical materials.”
“I say Gnosticism but this isn’t what all sects of Gnosticism believe. Gnostics sprouted from the integration of Orphic cults, Kabbalah and mystical Christianity, so some sects that had less influence from Kabbalists are more into the apocalyptic escape from the mistake of creation.”
“It seems then that the Kabbalah is the most solid axis here.
I have too many philosophic problems with this apocalyptic Demiurgism
as we have discussed this summer”
"Late Gnosticism equals it in power, as the more developed Gnostic sects completely redesigned their idea of Creation and the role of the Demiurge.
equals kabbalah in power I mean "
“for example, to begin with, who are these gnotisticsts to even arrive at such a radical conclusion, which negates their own validity and thus their own conclusions?”
“They essentially claim that reality is imperfect; God is perfect; therefor reality is not the work of God. They simply reject reality itself.”
“Its literally the contradiction “This statement is false””
“But this is the thing.
It is paradoxical like you said. But the challenge is to defy the paradoxical logic and reassert your own ego in the face of the ego-death that this radical nihilism implies. That is where late Gnostics went beyond this apocalyptic view of the Demiurge.”
“One would get something like chaos magic.”
“Yes, later Gnostics essentially, by reasserting their ego in the face of total reality-negation, achieved a level of consciousness beyond “reality”; it is like what we call chaos magick.
And in turn, they began to see the Demiurge in a new light. He created an imperfect world only to challenge them with this paradoxical logic, so that they could learn to transcend themselves- mankind.”
“that is pretty cool. Ironically probably here they open a pathway to some closer proximity to the invisible fire.”
“So the Demiruge became a kind of Prometheus figure to them; both a thief and philosopher, a trickster and a teacher.”
“I like that.
There is much reality in that.
It is an accessible magical state.
not easily, not by protocol, naturally - it is wholly antiprotocolic
given it rejects structure
but one might use (…) actually in this sense, as a power to create a coherent agency without a prior ground
Okay, so if we take “Satan” as the Accuser, this gnosticism arises in that sense.”
“He- the Demiurge- creates evil, imperfection and suffering, so that, through the reality-negation it imposes, man can transcend his own Ego and achieve a consciousness that goes beyond the paradox of earlier Gnostic thought. He functions like a Luciferian figure; persecuting only to encourage growth, painfully carving man into new, more beautiful shapes. Essentially: “If self-consciousness is included in the All-Being, it cannot be conscious of self: but if it is not included in the All-Being, then the All-Being is not the All.” Faced with the paradox of Gnostic thought, the ego either dies or transcends itself.”
“yes.
(…) resolves this, as a creation logic, in that there is no All Being at the outset -
but of course this realization can only be attained through a highly Luciferian process
Where do you figure Bafomet in all this?”
“Another figure of the same being. Yaldabaoth, Prometheus, Lucifer, the Demiurge, etc. etc. These are all human masks put on one being. The Demiurge is not Lucifer; but both the Demiurge and Lucifer are masks worn by the one Being. Humans can only look at Gods through masks.”
“Yes, fair enough.
I mean I guess I would have to agree.
Still, these masks to have different properties which are somehow real
paradoxically again, perhaps one needs to take the mask seriously to grasp what is behind it.”
“Of course Baphomet is Goetic and rooted in magical praxis, whereas Gnosticism is a theoretical magic much like Kabbalah or Enochian
You need both a praxis and magical theory”
“It has become what Speer calls an entry in an alphabet of desire; it has as a name accreted psychic materials invested to it over time and become invocative of a living pattern inside the subconscious.”
“Ints interesting. In the Kabbalah, generally these Demiurgic figures are attributed to Chokmah
but of course they also belong in the path from Hod to Tipharet.”
“Gnosticism is essentially about the first-mind transcending itself; whereas Kabbalah is about the immanence of the first-mind to its own creation. I have come to understand them as two poles I am still fitting together, as nobody else has so far.
Two poles of one super-theology, mere fragments of which exist from the Hekataics, Orphics, Eleusinians, etc. etc.”