I took a few months away from Substack, so I'm only just now getting around to reading this series. Very interesting! Gnosticism has always been this vague thing on the outer edges of my knowledge of spiritual and esoteric topics, so this helped my understanding a lot.
My initial feeling on Gnosticism is that it's not for me. Seeking after forbidden knowledge, intentional immorality, the chaos and fluidity of it all... it's *tempting*, certainly, but to me that temptation is a red flag. I'm ultimately a rule-follower - I think Order is necessary to allow for human flourishing, and too much transgression undermines that.
Then again, I am a little-G gnostic in some ways. My whole Mind & Mythos Project is seeking after esoteric knowledge, I'm trying to know the unknowable (the human mind). The image of a scholar sitting in a darkened library room, nose-deep in strange tomes... that's my idea of a perfect day.
Anyway, this was a perfect introduction to Gnosticism. Thanks for writing it!
Awesome, glad you got around to it. I think a lot of people have very vague notions of what Gnosticism was/is like you say, so I hope this series is valuable in that respect at the very least.
I think your reaction is a very common one. Needless to say, I have a lot of thoughts on this, and at some point I will write them up in an even longer essay series lol. But for now I will say this.
Transgression is always relative to the customs, norms, and power structure of one’s culture. For the ancient gnostics, this was primarily the strongly conservative/repressive culture of ancient Judaism and the brutal oppression of Roman authorities. Today, our “divine spark” – the intrinsic freedom/creativity of the human soul we might say – is conditioned and controlled in a very different manner and by very different forces (secular modernity, liberalism, techno-capitalism, mass media, nation-states, etc.). Sex, drugs, and heresy are not as wildly transgressive as they once were – so what is then?
I’ve hit on a few answers: Secrecy, Silence, Smallness, Ignorance, Randomness, Dreams. The words explain the general idea, but there are also some more esoteric/idiosyncratic meanings that I have in mind. All of these themes come together in what I would call spiritual childliness (which, I would argue, was Jesus' central teaching).
You can reject this fallen world with purposeful transgression or by retreating from it (i.e. asceticism), OR by simply not knowing its ways – so ignorance as in the child who does not know you can’t say the emperor is naked (or as in the zen beginner’s mind), and Silence as in you do not yet speak words and thus are deeply in touch with the non-linguistic/rational parts of your mind-body.
"The special trait making me an anarch is that I live in a world which I 'ultimately' do not take seriously. This increases my freedom; I serve as a temporary volunteer."
— Ernst Jünger, 'Eumeswil' (1977)
It’s kind of like that - the spiritual child does not take this world seriously, not by rejection but because they do not even know what it would mean to do so (and so they are free).
I took a few months away from Substack, so I'm only just now getting around to reading this series. Very interesting! Gnosticism has always been this vague thing on the outer edges of my knowledge of spiritual and esoteric topics, so this helped my understanding a lot.
My initial feeling on Gnosticism is that it's not for me. Seeking after forbidden knowledge, intentional immorality, the chaos and fluidity of it all... it's *tempting*, certainly, but to me that temptation is a red flag. I'm ultimately a rule-follower - I think Order is necessary to allow for human flourishing, and too much transgression undermines that.
Then again, I am a little-G gnostic in some ways. My whole Mind & Mythos Project is seeking after esoteric knowledge, I'm trying to know the unknowable (the human mind). The image of a scholar sitting in a darkened library room, nose-deep in strange tomes... that's my idea of a perfect day.
Anyway, this was a perfect introduction to Gnosticism. Thanks for writing it!
Awesome, glad you got around to it. I think a lot of people have very vague notions of what Gnosticism was/is like you say, so I hope this series is valuable in that respect at the very least.
I think your reaction is a very common one. Needless to say, I have a lot of thoughts on this, and at some point I will write them up in an even longer essay series lol. But for now I will say this.
Transgression is always relative to the customs, norms, and power structure of one’s culture. For the ancient gnostics, this was primarily the strongly conservative/repressive culture of ancient Judaism and the brutal oppression of Roman authorities. Today, our “divine spark” – the intrinsic freedom/creativity of the human soul we might say – is conditioned and controlled in a very different manner and by very different forces (secular modernity, liberalism, techno-capitalism, mass media, nation-states, etc.). Sex, drugs, and heresy are not as wildly transgressive as they once were – so what is then?
I’ve hit on a few answers: Secrecy, Silence, Smallness, Ignorance, Randomness, Dreams. The words explain the general idea, but there are also some more esoteric/idiosyncratic meanings that I have in mind. All of these themes come together in what I would call spiritual childliness (which, I would argue, was Jesus' central teaching).
You can reject this fallen world with purposeful transgression or by retreating from it (i.e. asceticism), OR by simply not knowing its ways – so ignorance as in the child who does not know you can’t say the emperor is naked (or as in the zen beginner’s mind), and Silence as in you do not yet speak words and thus are deeply in touch with the non-linguistic/rational parts of your mind-body.
"The special trait making me an anarch is that I live in a world which I 'ultimately' do not take seriously. This increases my freedom; I serve as a temporary volunteer."
— Ernst Jünger, 'Eumeswil' (1977)
It’s kind of like that - the spiritual child does not take this world seriously, not by rejection but because they do not even know what it would mean to do so (and so they are free).