WK 1- Mar. 2 - Knowledge,Wisdom and Gnosis - What do these words mean to you? How do express these principles in your spiritual work? Is any one more important than the other? Why?
Sometimes I tell people that Wicca is
my religion but my spirituality is Gnosticism.
The problem with this, however, was that very few people know what I
mean when I say I am a Gnostic.
Sometimes I don’t know what I mean, either. What I do know, however, is the feeling I get
when I read the Gospel of Thomas or Thunder, Perfect Mind. I know that Gnosticism did more than just
help me to reconcile any anxiety I had about my torrid Christian past. It opened up a whole new trajectory for my
future, in this life and beyond.
Identifying as a Gnostic doesn’t mean
I can’t practice Wicca or be a witch or I had to change anything about my
life. If anything, it gives me more
options. I can pretty much enter into
any religious ritual or ceremony and feel perfectly at home because it’s like
God speaks to me anywhere and everywhere I go.
We’re surrounded by myths and stories and archetypes, and Gnosticism
gave me the lexicon with which to understand what God was saying through these
tools.
Here’s what Gnosticism is not – despite
what you may have read in a billion Neo-Pagan books, we don’t believe that we
are aliens from another planet who got stuck on earth because of the evil
Demiurge. For some reason every time I
read a Neo-Pagan book that mentions Gnosticism, they always have these ridiculous
concepts of what Gnosticism is and it really pisses me off. Saying that Gnostics believed they were
aliens is such an oversimplification, and furthermore, that’s literalist thinking. If the Gnostics do anything, it’s reject
literalist thinking.
When the ancient Gnostics wrote
about being from “some other place”, they were talking about pieces of themselves,
what we’d call Aggregate Structures in the Esoteric Mysticism system. So these pieces are part of greater, more
complete and permanent pieces of the Cosmos, and we are made up of these
aggregate structures. But aggregate structures
aren’t of this world; they’re of something more than this world and beyond this
world. Alien just means outsider,
because we’re not of this world. This
world is an illusion. So we nurture and
foster these permanent structures because they will help us to return to the
True Source, which is not of this world or this existence.
So as a Gnostic I’m not recreating
some science fiction story where I’m looking for my mothership to take me home
beyond the stars. I just recognize those
greater pieces of me that are part of the Cosmos, and I can use those pieces to
help me forge a greater bond to Deity, which is beyond this time and
space. By engaging in Gnosis, in
knowing, I recognize that piece of me, and I know how it relates back to the
Source. I can begin to see past the
illusions of this reality, and I KNOW.
Gnosis is a place beyond logic or thought or feeling. It just is.
It’s certainty with every fiber of your being because Gnosis is every
fiber of your being.
Sophia, or Wisdom, plays a great
role in Gnostic teachings. In some
Gnostic myths (since there are so many of them because the Gnostics loved to
write and re-write and re-write myths) Sophia is a piece of the Monad, the oneness
that is the Cosmos and all things and no things. But she messed up a little and creates the
Demi-urge, the little maker. The
Demiurge doesn’t know it’s connected to the Oneness (like many of us do not
know we are connected to the Oneness) so he creates this world, but it’s a
shitty world. So Sophia feels bad and
she tries to help the Demiurge’s creations, who would be Adam and Eve. She helps them by putting a piece of herself
in them, a powerful and permanent aggregate structure that is a piece of
Wisdom. This piece that is within us all
is closer to the Oneness than Sophia’s own flawed creation, the Demiurge, who
is the creator in some myths (such as the Christian creation story.)
So what is Wisdom? Wisdom is Sophia realizing she made a mistake
and having the grace to try to fix it the best she can. Wisdom is thoughtful compassion which guides
action.
And knowledge is just the fact that
I read all of this stuff in lots of books over the years, that I can regurgitate
it to you in a blog post. Knowledge of
these mysteries prepared me for them, but it took a long time for me to have
the Wisdom to understand, and even longer for the Gnosis to settle itself
permanently into my being. I’m not just some
flawed creation. I am a being of light
and Wisdom, connected to the Cosmos. I
am a Gnostic.
If you’re interested in reading
more, I’ve written a lot about Gnosis and the Gnostics over the years. You can find more about these topics at the
following links:
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