What's the deal with pseuds and Gnosticism?
Same reason pseuds keep making threads like this.
>>24684175The ultimate expression of resentment. Not content being bitter merely about some aspect of reality, but about existence itself.
>>24684209Didn't FP already say that?
>>24684175It's interestingI started reading the Nag Hammadi Scriptures and The Tripartite Tractate is really interesting but idk if I believe it. The Valentinians believe that Jesus made the Demiurge and basically possessed the Demiurge to create the physical world
>>24684224ffs go read platos timaeus and plotinus and drop this christcuck/evil demiurge shit already
>>24684209It's not really about bitterness or resentment, it's just acknowledging that this world is fallen and evil
>>24684229"There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
>>24684278i will personally drive over and hit you with a broom on the head every time you say hylic shit like this
>>24684175Pseuds love to think they have some "secret knowledge". As a dude bad enough to have genuine occult knowledge, I share it with everyone. Everyone deserves a chance. No one will listen anyways, and when they dont, that was their agency, not some spoopy pretentious bullshit. I'll share everything I know with those who do listen, but I only have so much time on the planet to indulge people who dont give a shit. After all, what's more fun than scorching some eyeballs with blinding truths that ruminate and emerge years later?
>>24684324If you're unhappy, then what do you know about anything?https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fbuN0uvHmW4
>>24684332>pseuds love to think that they're special and have secret knowledge>not me, I'm *actually special*, and everyone deserves a chance to hear me, but no one listens!Fascinating. Tell me more about your disdain for pseuds.
>>24684337you arranged the words in a grammatically correct way but the sentence itself is devoid of meaning. it doesn't matter what i know or don't know because pain is an integral part of life itself and can't be reasoned awaygood taste in youtubers though. i will watch the video. i still think it's funny how he got his pig people racism bullied out of him
>>24684332you radiate low level awareness. come back after a few more cycles and then we'll talk about enlightenment
>>24684348>>24684354I think you'd be surprised. I just dont believe in hidden knowledge being hidden at all. If you want to know something, you'll find it, but it depends on whether you're willing to listen. I'm only obligated to provide an answer.
>>24684332what books do I read to learn real magic
>>24684378>I think you'd be surprisedno not really. back into the wheel with you
>>24684387probably some physics textbook?
>>24684378>I think you'd be surprised.I think you're young and insecure about your general social standing. That's why you play awkward, coy games with complete strangers about your perceived worth and why everyone "deserves a chance" to listen to you. You're saying one thing, but the subtext of what you're saying is conveying something else. That's what I think.
>>246841751. contrarianism/second option bias2. conspiratorial mindset3. nihilism4. mastery of esoterica as status signaling (this is a big one here)
>>24684332Nigger
>>24684175What's the deal with this website and so many people really not liking Gnosticism? For me, 1. I like Christianity on an aesthetic and symbolic level, but I think the metaphysics and details of traditional Christianity are very unappealing.2. I do like Hindu/Buddhist metaphysics,3. I like the Matrix and Philip K Dick books,4. I like mysteries and the idea of hidden messages and secrets appeals to me,5. I accept Epicurean dilemma, and6. What little "mystical experience" I might be able to claim to have (probably mild psychosis) fits decently well with Gnosticism.So Gnosticism (at least as a topic) is like a bunch of things that appeal to me all packed together in a nice box that, at least superficially, isn't incompatible with my view of the world. What's not to like, or what's not to like about the things I like that lead me to like Gnosticism as well?t. pseud?
>>24684175Gnosticism is for people intelligent to recognize the flaws in Christianity but not intelligent enough to reject it fully. They're smart enough to think, "Hey, this doesn't really make sense," but not smart enough to break out of their early childhood cultural programming, hence the Gnostic cope of>well uhhh I'm not a Christian but that's because I actually love Jesus even MORE than Christians; I'm the true Christian because I know the secret truth about the world blah blahIt's pure midwit territory which is why it's so popular here.
>>24684434It does not conform to modern science
>>24684447I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to, but even if so, most religion doesn't conform to modern science without excuses, so I don't see why that would be a deal-breaker, especially since Gnosticism, unlike mainstream Christianity, is very comfortable with reading things as allegory.
>>24684398Swing and a miss. Anyways, I already told you why outright. I believe everyone deserves a chance because if you request information, I provide it, and you refuse it, then I'm justified in my subsequent behaviour because you exercised your agency. But if I just leverage that information without telling you, or deny you the information, not only is it less effective, I'm ethically responsible because you had no agency in the process. I'm not proselytizing. In fact, it's pretty hard to find me at all, even if you're looking for me. Not because I'm sought after or "special" but because I only reside in one location, and have done so for a very long time. I could give a fuck about anonymous "social standing" or impressing strangers, but I do like to share and discuss things with like minded people. I play coy because curiosity should be rewarded and hubris should be punished, but it takes a moment to suss out.>>24684390I do love me some wheels.>>24684387Depends on the particulars. An anon told you before I had the chance about real magic, but Dr Seuss is a fine choice.
>>24684436>not intelligent enough to reject it fullyRejecting it fully seems more wasteful than intelligent. We collectively have all these nice churches and art and centuries of investment in Christianity, so it seems more prudent to find new (old?) ways to understand it than to throw the whole thing in the bin. So I see interest in Gnosticism as being in part motivated by a drive to reinterpret and repurpose Christianity, though I'm doubtful that a simple reconstruction of an earlier more gnostic Christianity would be anywhere near good enough in that regard.
>>24684209How does one deal with the fact that reality is tainted, I mean physical reality is damaged and incomplete?Like if the nature wont give things up without a fight. Like if you have to take everything by force non serviam.
>>24684447By Einstein's relativity , the space is prison by definition. Check mate
>>24684470You're a dilettante. Bit of info, yet no rigorous practice. Stop wasting anon's time. You post like your garden variety pretentious kid on /x/.
>>24684707Which anons time? The smugposting armchair psychologist or the flippant one who threw out a request with less than half of his ass? Either way, seems like you didnt understand the very obvious structure of what I said or that I name dropped a person who changed the nature of reality by will and by skill.
>>24684807>Which anons time?The 'structure of what you've said' is 1:1 correlated with your typical /x/ pseud. Go back to lurking.
>>24684186Same reason to suspect this as samefagging
>>24684807What do you want, for an anon to drop to their knees and shine your cock before you deem them worthy of gracing them with your esoteric information? For somebody who lauded themselves as a great sharer of esoteric information you really are a coy little faggot when it comes to sharing.
BTFOd by Plotinus (PBUH)
>>24684175Gnosticism is empowering, it elevates one as being morally above God. It also gives you a scapegoat for all of your shortcomings, once again in God. The demiurge's main function in most gnostic sects is not an evil creator, but as a jailkeeper that keeps mankind separated from the good.A lot of the contemporary appeal is also a rehashing of the Buddhist LARP of the beatniks, where American Evangelical Christianity's vacuous nature makes the foreign seem more authentic, only foreignness now is a foreignness of an imagined untarnished time before the corruption of Pauline Christianity. It is silly doubly so because we have major Gnostic groups today, the Free Masons and the Mormons are both Gnostic, at least the beatniks had the ignorance born of living on the opposite side of the world from the Buddhists and not knowing anything about it, your average self-described Gnostic despises Mormonism because it looks too orderly, virtuous, and moralizing, the same reason why most of the beatniks eventually rejected Buddhism.I think the worst part about Gnosticism, insofar as viewing Gnosticism as a theological system divorced as much as possible from moral value judgements, is the heavy reliance upon conspiracy theories in order to gain legitimacy. Every Gnostic sect has a myth they made up about how mainstream Christianity conspired to hide the truth. Jesus was Gaelic, the Catholic Church removed a bunch of stuff from the Bible, Constantine did XYZ thing, etc etc, it is mind rot which only serves to reinforce the delusion of personal wisdom, gaining not only secret knowledge of the divine, but also being inducted into a historical tradition. When you enfranchise someone into something, of course they are going to defend it.
>>24684436/thread
>>24684175They're smart enough to not fall for the just world fallacy. Like so many people do, including most of this thread.
>>24685225>before the corruption of Pauline ChristianityIf Marcion and Valentinus had the right idea about Paul, then the corruption happened after Paul. Personally I think Marcion was mostly right and Paul's letters in their only surviving form are heavily messed with. Certainly there are strong, widely accepted scholarly cases that some letters attributes to Paul are entirely forgeries and even the "authentic" letters have interpolations.
>>24685225>Every Gnostic sect has a myth they made up about how mainstream Christianity conspired to hide the truth.Maybe because they did? As mentioned, that some letters attributed to Paul are forgeries which include anti-Gnostic content is decently widely accepted.1 Timothy 6:20"Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the profane chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge; by professing it some have missed the mark as regards the faith."If someone felt the need to lie and forge things (and perhaps use violence) to shut down the more Gnostic varieties of Christianity, then maybe they actually had a much closer claim to legitimacy than the "orthodoxy" wanted to admit.
>>24685225>your average self-described Gnostic despises MormonismAre the Mormon-hating Gnostics in the room with us right now? I would guess that most people including most Gnostics barely think about or know much at all about Mormonism.
>>24684501Even as a nonbeliever, you can still engage with and appreciate christian culture without having to invent (or rather, appropriate) a derivative belief system that you mold to fit your understanding of the world.
>>24684912You think OP made this thread to insult himself?
>>24686390Well, I was raised in Christianity and had my head filled with it from a young age like many westerners, and so in some sense I think of it as something that was given to me and is mine to make use of. It isn't a separate culture, it's my culture, and having realized that it's wrong and awful in many ways, from my perspective, I'd like to fix it or improve on it. But maybe I'm also operating somewhat under the delusion that fixing religion might fix people, when in fact what happens most often is exactly what I'm setting out to do: everyone fixes religion to suit their own preferences either consciously or more often subconsciously, so there isn't much point in trying to change religion rather than something more practical. But maybe not.
>>24686582I'm in the same boat as you, and while I still grapple with the existential dread that the belief in hell brings, I've managed to transform my programmed fixation on Christianity into genuine enthusiastic study of the religion from the agnostic perspective of someone who feels the pull to believe but knows it's ultimately incompatible with how I understand the world as an adult. For whatever reason (likely because I was indoctrinated), I can spend hours reading books and watching essays about Christianity: how ancient Israelite religion evolved from polytheistic Canaanite traditions, how monotheistic Judaism evolved over time from disaster after disaster, how the stories in the OT and NT were modified and redacted and came to find their present form, why specific books and beliefs were discarded. And more importantly, what these things say about the people who believed in them, how they were responses to problems of their own time, and how these stories of passion and woe give us an insight into the human condition and the desire to reach out and know a loving God. I still feel strong emotions reading the Bible, looking at religious artwork, and listening to Christian music (not the modern rock trash, but sacred harp choir stuff and the like). Because even if I don't believe that the religion is literally true, I still find comfort and kinship in their ideas. A loving mother, a son who redeems us despite our faults. So that's sort of how I approach and extract value from Christianity as an ex-believer, not through modifying it to fit my needs, but acceptance of its faults and exaltation of its beauty, knowing that its believers ultimately feel the same way I do. It fills my God-shaped hole, at least partially.To your second point, I think it's futile to attempt to "fix" a religion, either for yourself or for others. Like you mentioned, people mold their religion to fit their pre-existing values, and you can see it happening less than a decade after Jesus was crucified. And on an individual level, I think what you've been brought up with will always stick with you at a more fundamental level than anything you learn along the way. Buddhism is most likely a belief system that fits best with how I understand the world now, but I can't bring myself to accept it at anything deeper than a "scientific" level. Maybe Kierkegaard's Christian existentialism is the correct path forward for those who need something deeper out of traditional Christian belief, but he filters me.
>>24684229thats what you put into it. because you are too cowardly to see and put the good in it. fallen, yes, but evil, no.
>>24686641I don't immediately have much to say in response to anything you said, but I appreciate the response and it is very relatable. I will say that although I have a very cynical attitude toward religion, I do still firmly believe in a deeper layer of reality that might be called supernatural or spiritual. And to the extent that it exists, it seems very strange for it to not have had some presence in the development of religion. And to me the Gnostic side of Christianity feels like it might have had the greatest genuine influence from that, so part of my hope is that Christianity doesn't really require cynical "fixing" so much as just looking deep enough into it to find something real that got left behind in the beginning. But Idk I've gotten more pessimistic about that over time.
>>24686740That's fair, I never really developed the cynical feeling towards religion that many ex-Christians (for good reason) have, so that may be part of why I can still appreciate it as I do. I agree that there is some underlying "force" responsible for the fact that there is something instead of nothing, and religions do strive to answer this question. This is why I consider myself an agnostic and not an atheist. I have very little faith in our ability to come to any truthful conclusions regarding this problem in an unbiased manner however; I think our brains obscure the truth of reality much more than we realize, and many of the typical answers that religions provide about the nature of the world (such as ascribing the creation thereof to a conscious entity, or even the belief in a moment of creation in general) say more about how our minds operate than about any fundamental truths of reality. I don't even think we can get to the point where we know which questions to ask. I read about Julian Jaynes' theory of bicameral mentality somewhat early in life, and it really contributed to my understanding of religion as a psychological phenomenon that's not capable of truthfully answering these deep existential questions. Plato's cave is deeper than we can ever comprehend.Regarding Gnosticism, I see it more as an answer to the problem of evil and the discrepancies between Yahweh and the father of Jesus, rather than an attempt to answer fundamental metaphyiscal questions regarding reality. If I were to believe in it, it would be for that reason, and not the fact that it answers existential questions better than mainstream Christianity. That being said, I'm not sure how familiar you are with the origins of Gnosticism, but does take a lot of influence from Platonic/Neoplatonic ideas (Plato's theory of forms and a more perfect, higher level of reality, the concept of the monad as the featureless, absolute progenitor of all), and these schools of thought might have the answers you're looking for. I view mainstream Christianity and Gnosticism as existing along a "platonic slider," each with different levels of Greek influence. Christian concepts like the eternal soul came from Greek philosophy; the OT Israelites did not believe in an eternal soul, rather that you were dust with the breath of God blown into you that simply evaporates when you die, much as your own breath does. So in my view it's not a matter of looking deeper into Christianity, but how much your branch of Christianity is influenced by Greek philosophy. As a personal tangent, the Hebrew concept of the soul makes much more sense to me and is more in line with basic biology than Plato's concept of the eternal soul, which I also believe is a product of our psychological makeup and the urge to see yourself as eternal (or rather, the fear of seeing yourself as ephemeral).
>>24684175It has interesting schizo cosmology and feels like a subversive metaphysical truth you weren't supposed to know.
>>24686836>I'm not sure how familiar you are with the origins of Gnosticism, but does take a lot of influence from Platonic/Neoplatonic ideasJust Platonic; Neoplatonism came at least a century later IIRC. And I'm not sure if Gnosticism borrowing from Platonism is strictly the right way to think about it. Instead I would suggest that maybe they used Platonic terminology to describe and develop their ideas just like orthodox Christianity did. E.g. there were supposedly earlier Gnosticisms that didn't use the word demiurge. Gnosticism's origins are still speculative, and to the extent that they borrowed from existing ideas, I wonder if some of their borrowing was from mystery cults about whom we otherwise don't know much, so it could serve as a window into lost ideas.And there are some ideas in Gnostic texts that seem kind of eastern to me, though maybe they can be found in Greek philosophy as well? Like, from the Gospel of Philip:"People cannot see anything in the other world unless they become it. That place is not like this world, where people see the sun without becoming the sun, see the earth without becoming the earth, and so on. In the realm of truth, if you see the Spirit, you become the Spirit; if you see Christ, you become Christ; and if you see the Father, you become the Father.Though you see everything there is to see in this world, you do not see yourself. But in the other world, you see yourself, and you become what you see."or"Truth’s mysteries come to us through images and symbols. The bridal chamber, the holy of holies, is invisible to us. The curtain in front of it has concealed the workings of God, but when it is ripped and what it has been covering is uncovered, the building that contains it will be abandoned and demolished."
>>24686836>Christian concepts like the eternal soul came from Greek philosophy; the OT Israelites did not believe in an eternal soulThis is one area where I believe at least some early Gnostics took the non-Greek side, but it would take me a while to recollect everywhere I got the idea from (aside from the canon gospels and letters, which many Gnostics read too, though their versions may have been a bit different than what we have). One not especially good source I remember is that believing in the mortality of the soul is attributed to Simon Magus, arch-gnostic, by the Clementine Homilies, as one of his wrong views.The body/soul/spirit distinction is relevant here, and I spent a while trying to figure out what exactly soul vs spirit would've meant to the early Christians but haven't yet reached anything satisfactory and my impression is that the distinction had the potential to be idiosyncratic between writers of the time.
>>24687137I would be very interested to know how they understood the soul and the spirit as well... admittedly I don't know a ton about Gnosticism proper, but I recall that many of the writings we've found differ so greatly that it's really unfair to group them all under one umbrella. I think our only knowledge of Gnosticism before Nag Hammadi came from church leaders like Irenaeus who were writing rebuttals.>>24686948Interesting, I had always figured it as a direct offshoot of Christianity developing some time after the current canon had already finalized, but that's probably not accurate. It's easy for me to place it at the end of a timeline of low to high Christologies, but I'm sure the reality is more complex. Those excerpts are fascinating though I can't quite comprehend what they're getting at. I need to sit down and read some of the Gnostic gospels at some point.
It's captivating and appealing on a deep level. I dropped it entirely when I actually understood Christianity and realized it made all gnostic nonsense unnecessary.>>24684434>the metaphysics and details of traditional Christianity are very unappealing.The people who say this have most likely not delved deep into the metaphysics and theology of Christianity
>>24684209>>24684229>>24684613Exactly when people say reality is evil they don't mean just the current or historic human experience of society and suffering of earth.Instead the very foundations of the universe and existence itself are evil. The laws of physics are such that there will always be scarcity due to entropy and a limited mass-energy in the universe. Godels incompleteness theorem proves that we will never be able to understand all of reality, and evolutionary pressures result in eternal competition, conflict and systems of parasitism.It's a heinous reality. Things didn't have to be this way. The laws of physics could have been such that there would be no scarcity and no conflicts. Mathematics could be such that we could understand everything eventually. And evolution could have been such that there would be no pressure for competition.These things aren't fundamental to existence or being. It's just fundamental to our reality, which is why it's evil.Nothing to do with resentment or my personal life. It applies to all lifeforms that exist in this hellish universe.
Lately I've started making threads about any random shit and claiming it has hidden esoteric Gnostic themes
It's a brilliant belief system because it absolves you of all wrongdoing and you don't even have to be critical>anything that goes wrong is the fault of the demiurge>anyone telling you that you're an unemployed schizophrenic is just a hylic agent of chaos you can ignore
>>24684436Intelligent people don't find flaws in Christianity
I wish I could understand more about Gnosticism because it attracts me to a deeper lever but I feel like I’m too stupid to understand. Isn’t there a /lit/ chart with some books?
>>24684175>gnosticismRefuted by Plotinus. Although the gospel of Thomas and Mary is interesting.
>>24687709>Instead the very foundations of the universe and existence itself are evil.The foundations and features you've listed are not inherently evil, they can only be considered evil as a result of the limitations of human existence and our limited ability to understand the world around us in an unbiased manner. And attempts and desires to understand the whole of reality as objective truth are primarily motives of western thought, not even inherent to humanity as a whole. I'm not very well versed in the philosophy of mathematics, but I don't think it can be taken for granted that it's an intrinsic feature of the universe; it may very well be a construct resulting from the development of formal logic and language. In short, an evil or ignorant creator diety becomes less essential once you get past the idea of human exceptionalism.You could argue that the design of humans and other life on earth is "evil," given that we seem to have a higher proclivity for pain than for pleasure, but most people nowadays don't think of God as having designed life cell-by-cell; rather, God operates at a larger scale and provides answers to the big-pictures questions that science cannot answer. The Gnostics weren't privy to the origins of life and evolution as we are nowadays, and were trying to answer different questions than you are.
>>24684175Same attraction as wicca, neopaganism, assorted magic garbage. Nobody actually knows what any of it meant so you can write your own headcanon and pretend you’re now part of the ancient traditions challenging the fake and gay status quo. The great escape from the material plane turns out to be very close to jacking off to charge crystals in your basements.
>>24687709>Nothing to do with resentment or my personal lifeYour entire post is describing your pathetic, personal resentment about not being God. The existence of any form of adversity to your will at all is "evil". If you apply this kind of logic to daily life you're like a parody of a sociopathic narcissist.
>>24687660Recommend some deep metaphysics that will allow someone to properly understand Christianity then.
>>24689073>properly understand ChristianityYou can't, that's half the point
