I find Basilideanism interesting. It's the original form of reverse Christianity/Satanism. Well it is generally classified as a Christian sect by historians, specifically of the Gnostic variety. It's even thought that the holiday of Epiphany originated in the liturgical practices of the Basilideans of Alexandria that later became a pan-Christian festival. The Basilideans understood themselves as a post-Christian movement, transcending Christianity and Judaism, and their exegesis of Psalm 2:4 lead them to a substitutionary belief about Jesus's crucifixion which eventually found its way into Islam later on (compare Psalm 2:4 to Irenaeus's account of Basilidean beliefs in Against Heresies, Book I, Chapter 24).They basically worshiped a unique deity called Abraxas, the Great Archon, whom they regarded as the god of the OT. At first he was ignorant, and sinful, but was enlightened by his Son, the Christ, and repented after he came to the knowledge of the one true God above him and the Holy Spirit. This information was the transmitted to the lower archons, and eventually reached Jesus at his baptism when Christ descended on him. The gospel was then spread to humanity. Abraxas, originally a Satanic and adversarial figure, was believed to have been redeemed by the gospel and worship of him through Jesus Christ lead to union with the one true God. They regarded the one true God as nothingness itself, and were in some sense atheistic, but in reality were more so nihilist and pantheistic, since they believed that ultimately there was no being at all, everything is really nothing. God does not exist, because God is not, and nothing exists, because everything is non-being. The universe, for Basilideans, was simply one evolutionary stage of nothingness. Some other unique features of the Basilideans was their practice of magic, their rejection of martyrdom as a legitimate Christian practice, and their denial of the general resurrection of the dead.
See this is the shit I'm always talking about. Why couldn't this type of cool mystical wizardy Christianity have become "orthodox"? No instead we get the single most fucking BORING rendition of the religion. The most basic cookie-cutter bullshit sect had to be the one to go """"mainstream""""". This just proves the point that literally NOTHING HAPPENS.
>>18011621damn that rules. good post OP
>>18011634You would literally be saying the same exact thing if it was reversed though...>THIS ABRAXAS SHIT IS SO BORING WHAT ABOUT THAT TRINITY HERESY! WOAAH EXOTIC AND MYSTICAL WOAAAHHH
>>18011721No I would be battling trinies as heretics.