While I agree that the truth is already present and we have the Light within us, I would completely disagree with what you said about the Eucharist. The reception of the Eucharist serves to break down the barriers between us and the divine, which we experience in this world. In fact, all of the...
Modern Gnostics utilize theurgy, ritual, prayer... the Mass, the sacraments, and in my tradition we have a monthly Sophia service. Of course there's also private prayer, rosaries, praying the psalms, the odes of Solomon, the Manichaean psalms, etc. Meditation tends to be popular, and it seems...
I just found that my questions weren't being answered by the religion I was raised in, and I didn't feel spiritually fulfilled by some of the other religions I subsequently practiced. I started out as a fundamentalist Christian in the Church of the Nazarene with my family, but ended up going to...
Well, since the original post talked about putting it on a billboard, to me that's proselytizing. Atheists, Christians, and various other religions have used billboards to try and convert people to their beliefs, and this doesn't really seem any different to me.
That was the point of the...
If I'm being honest, I probably would be a little bit offended -- not because I care what someone else believes, but because I don't care for proselytizers. I'd be just as offended by someone trying to shove their religious ideology down my throat.
That being said, you could look at the quote...
I'm just curious if any Christian witches here honor the holy Sophia (Wisdom) as their prefered form of the Divine Feminine. I do, but then I'm religiously Gnostic... I don't really identify as Wiccan, but I do practice witchcraft. :)
I'd say the attraction is what defines it. You don't have to have sex or be in a relationship to be gay, although one or both of these things tend to result from it.
It displays Adam as a creation and slave of the demiurge, in whom the divine spirit was trapped. The true God sent the serpent to him to teach him about his true state, as a son of God, and help him learn how to escape from the demiurge's power in order to return home to the fullness of God...
This doesn't really take a scholar... Here's an interlinear Bible online (the link is to Matthew 16) : http://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/NTpdf/mat16.pdf
You can see pretty easily that "Petros" and "petra" are used. Jesus tended to give nicknames to the apostles a lot, and this...
It depends on how you look at it... There wasn't really a formal Jewish canon of scripture until after the destruction of the Temple. The early Christians used the Septuagint, which was a Greek language collection of Jewish scripture containing many Jewish texts that are no longer in the Hebrew...
It never made sense to me either, which is why I'm Gnostic. The Gnostic interpretation of the Adam and Eve story makes so much more sense to me than the whole "original sin" thing!
He didn't die for our sins... The real sacrifice of Christ was God descending into the limitations of matter to save us. He was killed because worldly rulers saw Him as a threat to their power. After the crucifixion, various different Christians tried to make sense of His death, as can be seen...
Yup. :)
Theodotus was an important Valentinian figure, although not much of his writings have survived. I think this quote was actually recorded by Clement of Alexandria.
A Gnostic is someone who, according to the ancient Gnostic Fathers, has the revelatory and salvific knowledge of who we were, of what we have become, of where we were, of wherein we have been thrown, of whereto we are hastening, of what we are being freed, of what birth really is, and of what...
I like the Apocryphon of John, the Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Philip... I also really like the Hymn of the Pearl from the Acts of Thomas. I can't choose just one, haha!
This made me think of the Gnostic Gospel of Philip:
"God created man and man created God. So is it in the world. Men make gods and they worship their creations. It would be fitting for the gods to worship men." (Philip 85:1-4)