I'm still new to gnosticism but the more I read the more I see the similarities it has with mainstream Christianity and Islam where men are the originals and women are just a copy.

-The great mother barbelo were created by a superior father.

-Sophia tried to bring forth an aeon from herself just like the father did with barbelo only for her to end up bringing the amoral demiurge. A woman giving birth resulted in a flawed creation whereas if a he gave birth it's considered perfect and pure.

I know the Monad is "unknowable" but it's still knowable enough to be a "Father/He"

can someone please help me understand how's this not another misogynistic religion rooted in womb envy.

Hello from Los Angeles🌴

Im new here but I hope there are MORE members in the Los Angeles area👋🏽

So I just started reading the Apocryphon of John, and in the first few pages the text describes Barbelo in ways like: "Her light reflects his light," "She is from His image in His light," "She is the initial power," "She is before everything," "First to arise among the invisible realms," and so on.

Whenever I read these lines I can't help but think that the Gnostic conception of God is somewhat similar to an Orthodox Trinitarian god but instead of three divine persons, two persons: The Monad and Barbelo. Obviously The Monad is superior to Barbelo, but the way these passages describe Barbelo as the perfect Image of The Monad makes me wonder whether it's possible to think of the Gnostic Divinity as a two-person divinity, without forgetting that The Monad is superior and the Origin of everything, including Barbelo (just as, in Trinitarianism, the Father is the origin of everything, including the Son and the Holy Spirit).

What do you guys think?

I think we will have basic shapes bodies or orb like bodies in pleroma without the bizzare organs like legs and hands. Also maybe, we will have powers like green lantern where we will be able to make stuff with light like maybe make hands of light and stuff. So yeah . No genders, basic shapes and orbs and stuff and just simple existence and stuff.

Not only that we will be able to make maybe faces of light too and control them, just for recreational purpose.

Have you noticed that you can have internal monologue of a completely different personality inside your mind. Like you can have a persona of a person inside your head. You may be able to project that face out made of light. Something like that

Just some speculations. What do you guys think?

This essay argues that the oscillation running through Ecclesiastes - praised by some as literary paradox, dismissed by others as unresolved pessimism - is the phenomenological record of someone performing the crucifixion of opposites under a god-image that contains evil without the vocabulary to name what it contains. Qohelet is stranded between a polytheistic solution no longer available within the monotheistic tradition he was writing inside, and an individuation vocabulary not yet invented, which is why the text can only oscillate rather than resolve.

https://livingopposites.substack.com/p/the-earliest-crucifixion

Like how he mentions that the kingdom will come, when neither male is male or female is female?
A lot of religious people consider this "of the devil" like transgenderism etc. Or perhaps he didn't mean it literally, but perhaps an inner union of masculine and feminine?

Also how Jesus mentions that the kingdom is within your body.

If you look at statues of the devil, they often have serpents coiling up from what seems to be from the base of the spine.
Which seems to be similar to kundalini, where you also see two serpents traveling up the chakras of the spine, which is to symbolize inner transformation and enlightenment.

Also priests will often say that meditation is of the devil, because it's not Christianity (have heard this often).

When meditation is used for inner transformation and enlightenment or just simply for health benefits.

There are probably other parallels that I haven't brought up here.

I don't think religious people are right that this is of the devil and that it's mostly said out of fear for something they don't understand. However I'm curious if other people have noticed the same thing, and if we can learn anything from this or whether it just reflects ignorance and lack of understanding?

Like Sophia, she does not merely possess knowledge, she guides people toward awakening. Rather than dictating their fate, she encourages them to discover their true nature through their own choices.

The Oracle serves as a bearer of gnosis, the transformative knowledge that leads to liberation. Her role is not to predict the future, but to help individuals awaken to the reality that lies beyond appearances.

I'm in my 40's, minimally spiritual, semi-confounded Christian, still unable to understand what's going on in this reality, up until recently. Then I found out about NDEs, OBEs, astral projection, precognition, past life memories, and how much actual data has been collected on people's experiences. My mind has been utterly blown and the doors are off the hinges. Nobody talked about this stuff growing up and no wonder so many people are naturalistic or atheist or non-spiritual...

Anyway, I was just thinking about how many NDEs and past life memory accounts I've read/watched/listened to over the last two years. And I think I did pretty well at not falling for a lot of the assumptions and traps (new age like stuff for example) as I quickly noticed the duality at play (Heaven and Hell experiences).

I also recognized that there were basically two parts to NDE type experiences:

• Part 1: Logistical / Mechanical: floating out of body, fading into a 360-degree ball of awareness, heightened awareness/perception/knowledge, seeing a bright light of some kind, floating through a tunnel, life review, meeting God/Jesus/angels/guides/deceased loved ones/etc; then ultimately coerced to return to the body/life on Earth -- This is the part that is consistent across THOUSANDS of NDES

• Part 2: The content or "vision": this is basically the part where the person gets told a specific message, either personal or for everyone; or a tour of Heaven or Hell, etc -- This is the part that is usually unique, though there are "spheres" of overlapping message types, but still much variation -- IMO this is the Archonic manipulation

Anyway, like I said, I realized the commonalities and discrepancies and thought there must be some clues of truth hidden beneath the surface of all this stuff. These are real experiences people are reporting, but things still don't quite add up. Then I found out about prison planet, the soul trap, memory wipe, forced reincarnation, Gnosticism, the Demiurge, the Archons and the agenda to harvest and recycle sous, etc. It all clicked.

We are pure individual units of infinite consciousness/spirit (words that can't properly contain the right meaning) who have been placed in flesh bodies, and limiting our awareness down to the 5 senses (for most people) and trapped in time and causality - a massive physical/spiritual/mental matrix.

I've realized that the soul and post-death conditions were supposed to be the focus all along in life. This entire reality is a zone of manipulation, distraction, control, misrepresentation, occultation, and so on. Our true self is stateless, faceless, genderless, ageless, unbanked, unhoused, unemployed, nameless, non-human, timeless, numberless, immaterial, and cosmic -- aka sparks of the Divine Source embedded in flesh and time.

For me, it began with the realization that I am not my body and that nature is inherently evil. I don't mean evil in the moral sense, I mean that we live in a realm built on predation, decay, disease, competition, and death. Every living thing survives at the expense of another. Additionally, beauty and evil are ultimately intertwined.

For example, nature often disguises predation behind beauty: flowers use color and fragrance to lure pollinators, orchids mimic life to deceive insects, spiders create beautiful webs to trap prey, anglerfish use glowing lures to attract victims, and predators like tigers use their beauty and camouflage to hunt, revealing a world where attraction and destruction are often intertwined.

The beauty of nature is real, but so is its cold indifference to suffering. Recognizing that helped me see the material world as something less than perfect and not the creation of a good God.

Then I found gnosticism and everything clicked.

Today I had a realization that listening to music is a form of meditation. I am not saying music is a bad or good but in my case it didn't have a good effect.

After meditating and listening to my favorite artist I realized today I got pulled back into a way of thinking that felt "more attached" to this world. Like I was doing a negative form of meditation.

If anyone is knowledgeable about how music factor into gnosticism or a personal gnostic relation to music I would like to know how they navigate this. Is there music that you prefer? Do you avoid it?

Contrary to early Church propaganda Mary Magdalene was no prostitute, and was instead likely a senior disciple and recipient of Jesus' inner teachings as well as a possible consort. In the Gnostic Gospel of Mary she recounts a portion of these teachings to the other disciples after the crucifixion. In one scene she is disparaged and disbelieved by Peter due to her status as a woman, perhaps as a foretaste of things to come. Use this day to read the Gospel of Mary and remember the essential Christian teachings of love, forgiveness, and equality, and reject legalistic interpretations.

From A Gnostic Calendar

Sometimes I wonder if gnosis can truly begin until one sees the material world for what it really is. Not merely as a physical place, but as something temporary, flawed, incomplete, or deceptive, and ultimately incapable of revealing the fullness of reality.

As long as we remain completely identified with the material world - with our bodies, possessions, ambitions, fears, and the endless dramas of everyday life - we remain asleep to the divine spark within. Our attention is fixed outward, and what is eternal remains hidden.

Perhaps seeing through the veil of the material world is not simply another Gnostic teaching, but a condition that makes gnosis possible. How can we discover our true origin if we never question the reality we have always taken for granted? How can the divine spark awaken if it is completely absorbed in a world that is passing away?

This doesn't mean rejecting life or pretending the material world doesn't exist. Rather, it means refusing to mistake the temporary for the eternal. The world is experienced, but no longer worshipped. It becomes a place we pass through rather than the place to which we ultimately belong.

Perhaps this is why Christ's role in many Gnostic traditions is that of the Revealer or Illuminator. He does not merely teach moral truths; he opens the eyes of those who are asleep. The moment we begin to see through the illusion, the divine spark begins to remember itself. And perhaps that remembrance is what the ancient Gnostics meant by gnosis.

These reflections bring to mind a few sayings:

In the Gospel of Thomas, Saying 11, Jesus declares that "This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away; and those who are dead are not alive, and those who are living will not die."

In Saying 42, the shortest saying attributed to Jesus, we find the words: "Be passersby" (or "Become passers-by").

In saying 56, Jesus states "Whoever has come to understand the world has found only a corpse, and whoever has found a corpse, of him the world is not worthy."