Hermeticism & Gnosticism

[Frater Yechidah]

Let's try this topic again, since it didn't work out too well the last time.

In this thread we will discuss the links between Hermeticism and Gnosticism, whether or not one was derived from the other, or grew as sister traditions in the same era. I have a personal backup of the old thread dedicated to this subject, so I will probably post bits and pieces of the points I raised there for renewed discussion.

To get the ball rolling, I'll share one of my initial arguments from the old discussion:

If I have my sources correct, I believe Hermeticism and Gnosticism "proper" (i.e. Nag Hammadi, etc.) came from the same stream, sharing many similar "traits", and then they diverged along their seperate paths - or, perhaps more correctly, Gnosticism got the "axe cleaver" by the Church while Hermeticism continued an "underground tradition" that came back into the public light via the Golden Dawn and other organisations (such as the Rosicrucians before and after them). The Hermetic Corpus is [often] considered under the "blanket" of the wider definition of Gnosticism, though the more strict the definition becomes, the wider these two interconnected traditions become from one another.

I'd also like to raise the relationship of the Qabalah to Gnosticism. I strongly consider the Qabalah to be a Gnostic system, and not merely in the wider scope of the term, but down to the nitty-gritty details of cosmology (albeit within a distinctly Jewish framework). Indeed, I see the Qabalah as being the Gnosticism of Judaism, in much the same way as Gnosticism (proper [such as Valentinianism]) is the Gnosticism of Christianity, and Sufism is the Gnosticism of Islam. Going further than that, I see Gnosticism as the "Buddhism of the West", and Buddhism as the "Gnosticism of the East", for they share many similar teachings (intrinsic to a mystical path), but they developed along different lines and such discussion will need to be carried out by others more familiar with Buddhism than I.

So, there's the opening argument. I'd love to see some of your thoughts and opinions on this subject, particularly regarding the relationship (or lack thereof) between Gnosticism and Hermeticism.

LLLSHJ,
Yechidah.

[m1thr0s]

Thank you for rekindling this one Fr. Yechidah...it is an important topic and i am confident it will progress much better this time...

m1thr0s

[deviadah]

First of all I can now see what could be considered offensive in all this... ;) Gnosticism is just a word, and so are all those other esoteric areas mentioned in the initial post. It is neither the beginning nor the end of anything.

In the history of tea there are white tea, black tea and green tea. Each can be taken out of the equation without damage to the others, although the subject matter (tea) will become less rich if one were to do this.

In a sense I see Gnosticism as what Christianity ought to be. It makes more sense, and it can be better adapted to science.

What came first, the chicken or the egg?

Well; first I think it is a pointless discussion although my personal belief is that Hermeticism is much older than Gnosticism if put on a timeline... but then again it depends on how you decide to construct this timeline, but there is little doubt in my mind that that the comsic came before the chicken. But I hope this area won't be argued since, like Frater Yechidah has already stated, the following is much more of importance:

What does Hermeticism & Gnosticism have in common?

Well; this is something worth looking into. I think Gnosticism can support arguments made in Hermeticism and vice versa. They are like distant brothers with the same blood (iron). :cool:
Indeed, I see the Qabalah as being the Gnosticism of Judaism, in much the same way as Gnosticism (proper [such as Valentinianism]) is the Gnosticism of Christianity, and Sufism is the Gnosticism of Islam.

Qabalah is not a field that I feel comfortable to go in to at this level, so I will wait and see what others have to offer. Those who want to go into the Gnosticism of Islam should venture into this thread: Sufism (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/showthread.php?p=28441#post28441) (in this thread there are elements that deals with 'Gnostic' Sufism in relation to Hermeticism)

This discussion can take many directions and I am curious to see where it will go. There are many interesting subjects. The Demiurge = The Machine in the Ghost (?), Jacob Böhme (a true hermetic-gnostic kid of guy), Jung (that takes the interesting psychological road of alchemy/gnosticism) and many more...

A quote some might have seen me use a lot is, I believe, the essence of both Hermeticism and Gnosticism - and a creed I try to live up to:

“Those who say they will die first and then rise are in error. If they do not first receive the resurrection while they live, when they die they will receive nothing.” - The Gospel of Philip

In the end images can sometimes give the best argument, and below I see present both Hermeticism and Gnosticism:

http://www.satrakshita.com/images/gnosticism.jpg

[Frater Yechidah]

This is admittedly a huge topic of discussion, but hopefully we can keep several avenues of it open at once.

Firstly, late me state that I never ever consider Gnosticism to be the "be all and end all" of anything, least of all the spiritual path. I certainly don't consider it the origin of everything, because, let's face it, Platonism influenced Gnosticism and that movement pre-dated it by many centuries (and was in turn influenced and pre-dated by other movements before it). However, I am interested in both the historical and mythological links between Gnosticism and the various traditions around it. Also, when I call something like Sufism the "Gnosticism of Islam", I am using the term in its broadest application - i.e. in reference to the fundamental value of Gnosis (and a few other things). And, while "Gnosticism" is just a word, so is "Hermeticism", but words are intended to convey ideas, to aid us in communication, and I believe these two words (despite how vague and arguable they may sometimes be) do just that.

The thing is, we often assume that Gnosticism is Christian. But there were Jewish Gnostics before there were Christian ones. Indeed, the Sethian Gnostics (who are the only group to actually call themselves "Gnostics", giving us the name) were of a much more Jewish inclination (as evident in their mythology, which may seem quite "foreign" to those more familiar with the Christian Gnostic cosmology of the Christos and Sophia). Indeed, many of the teachings of Gnosticism can be seen to pre-date it as a "formal" movement, in that it was heavily influenced by Platonism, Judaic apocrypha, and even some Eastern teachings. However, what makes Gnosticism unique is its ability to absorb from all the traditions around it, making it a mixture of Christianity, Judaism, Platonism, Paganism, and much more. So, while I wholeheartedly agree that Gnosticism (proper [that is, what we assume to be Gnosticism from the Nag Hammadi Library, generally influenced by Valentinian preconceptions]) is what Christianity should have been (though, in a sense, it almost had to be different, and wouldn't have developed in the same way it did if it didn't have the "opposition" of the Church), I just wanted to highlight that, at least for Judaism, there was a non-Christian form of Gnosticism. In this vein, I generally prefer to call the Christian version as "Christian Gnosticism" or "Gnosticism proper". A more generic, blanket-term is available, and this is often written with a lower-case g (but not always).

I can easily see the potential of Hermeticism as pre-dating Gnosticism, but generally I find that we can only ever have a "hunch" on this, as there is little to no evidence to back it up. Likewise, I believe that Gnosticism pre-dates its accepted peak of 200 CE by anything of up to 500 years. So, it could just be that Gnosticism pre-dated Hermeticism. But I have no evidence of that, and therefore cannot make any decisive argument either way.

What we can do, however, is look at what we do know. Now, obviously the focus of Hermeticism is centred on Hermes, and he pre-dates a lot of things. However, it was originally thought that the Hermetic Corpus (which gave Hermeticism its name, as well as revealing what "Hermeticism" actually is) was from Ancient Egypt, that it was the original teachings of the followers of Hermes/Thoth there. However, it was later proven that the documents came from roughly 200 CE, well into the Christian era (and "coincidentally" at the peak of the Gnostic movement). What does this tell us? Well, it doesn't "prove" anything about the origins of the movement, but what it shows us is that the main texts on which we base "Hermeticism" on came from the same time (and place! I'll talk about this below) as the main texts on which we base "Gnosticism" did.

In the modern day, many scholars have taken to calling a theoretical movement centring around Hermes in the ancient world as "Hermetism", since the term "Hermeticism" was based on the Corpus Hermeticum and the texts that followed it over the centuries (such as the Emerald Tablet and the Kybalion). It should be noted that the Hermetic Corpus is the oldest source of Hermeticism we actually have to day, just as the Nag Hammadi Library (predominantly) is for Gnosticism.

Ancient Alexandria was a hot-spot for many different traditions. It was the centre of a deep philosophical and esoteric "mingling", where ideas were given and absorbed, and this is the place where Gnosticism saw its peak. Indeed, this is also the place where we get the Hermetic Corpus from. And, let's not forget that the name "Hermes" is a Greek name. Hellenistic Greece was a mixture of Greek and Egyptian, and Hermes Trismegistus is a mixture of Hermes (the Greek god) and Thoth (the Egyptian god). Even the language of Coptic, which so many of these texts were written in, was Egyptian written in Greek. It was, in my opinion, almost inevitable that new traditions representing bits and pieces from other ones would arise. The two dominant ones I can see from this era are Gnosticism and Hermeticism.

Thus, I propose that these are actually sister traditions, and come from a common stream, which is why it's so easy to inter-relate the two, why both seem to espouse and support each other's teachings. In a sense, the Hermeticists did exactly what the Gnostics did, but decided to do it devoid of Judaeo-Christian mythology (in much the same way as the Jewish Gnostics tried to omit any reference to Christian mythology).

It's also interesting to note that the Hermetic Corpus was found among the Gnostic texts of the Nag Hammadi Library, and it wouldn't surprise me to think that the Hermeticists also kept copies of Gnostic literature. Indeed, the Hermetic Corpus appeared on the orders of Cosimo de Medici, who sent people around Europe to collect rare manuscripts from monasteries. It is evident to me that we can consider him a true Hermeticist, and that he was, like John Dee in the Renaissance, a man who saw truth in all the books that he could find (which was something evidently espoused by the Gnostics, considering the Nag Hammadi Library contains texts from dozens of different sects and traditions, some Christian, some Jewish, some Platonic, and some distinctly Pagan).

If we read the Hermetic Corpus, it's easy to see the similarities between its teachings and that of Gnosticism. I can't remember off-hand, but I think "Poimandres" was a perfect example to illustrate this.

I have a few points I posted about the Qabalah in the other thread, but I'll save them for a different post.

Hopefully this will spark some good (non-hostile) discussion :)

LLLSHJ,
Yechidah.

[deviadah]

A nice post there. Here are some quick, and short, points...

Thus, I propose that these are actually sister traditions, and come from a common stream, which is why it's so easy to inter-relate the two, why both seem to espouse and support each other's teachings.


I see this stream as Alchemy!

I can't remember off-hand, but I think "Poimandres" was a perfect example to illustrate this.

For those that want to check this out: Poemandres, the Shepherd of Men (http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/herm/hermes1.htm)

I have a few points I posted about the Qabalah in the other thread, but I'll save them for a different post.

Pehaps create a Qabalah & Gnosticism thread... all this stuff will interlink so much that in order to avoid confusion - both for those discussing this and those reading it - it'll be better to keep them seperate (otherwise it is very easy to go off topic). We can always supply links to the different threads if need be.

:cool:

Edit: Qabalah & Gnosticism (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/showthread.php?t=2208) (it has been created)

[deviadah]

In the Gnostic text The Book of Thomas the Contender (http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/bookt.html) it states: For he who has not known himself has known nothing, but he who has known himself has at the same time already achieved knowledge about the depth of the all.
And in The Gospel of Thomas (http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html):
When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty.If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you...
For me this is nothing else than calcination, or the visita in vitriol!

I think gnosticism is easier to read than most alchemical/hermetic texts, and if one reads first the latter then the former, one suddenly understands both!

:cool:

[deviadah]

...the philosopher's stone is a complex of ideas that, no matter how you divide it, no matter how you slice it, it's very difficult to hold the pith essence of this concept, but what it really comes down to is the idea that spirit is somehow resident in matter in a very diffuse form. The goal of hermetic thinking and later alchemy is the concentration and redemption of this spirit, a focusing of it, a bringing of it together. This is an idea that was common in the Hellenistic world not only to hermetic thinking but also to Gnosticism.

Gnosticism is the idea that somehow the pure, holy, real light of being was scattered through a universe of darkness and of Saturnine power and that the goal is that by a process which we can call yogic or alchemical or medatative or moral/ethical, the light must be gathered and concentrated in the body and then somehow released and redeemed. All esoteric traditions, East and West, talk about the creation of this body of light... - Terence McKenna from Lectures on Alchemy (http://www.well.com/user/davidu/tmalchemy.html)

:cool:

[m1thr0s]

go Terence...always liked his matter-of-fact way of presenting complicated ideas...
the only downside is that he tends to over-simplify but that doesn't seem to hurt the more ambitious and it draws the curiosity seekers deeper into core mysteries...

m1thr0s

[frater luciferi]

excuse me as i have just returned again to the intellectual realm and occultism, i have developed conclusions that

a. gnosticism, kaballa, alchemy, hermeticism were in existance at the same time and interpollenated each other corresponding philosophy...I know for a face that gnostics read hermetic texts--if you look at the list of "books" contained in the nag hammadhi codex you will find that there are a few hermetic texts present that were bound with the more traditional gnostic texts...it would'nt be much of a stretch to say that say..during the renaissance that the folks from all the different schools of western esotericism still colaberated in some more material ways...

[m1thr0s]

nice to see you posting again frater luciferi. I think we pretty much have to recognize that great scholars of all ages have very often been travelers as well. It's almost certain that Pythagoras was in communication with Chinese mathematicians for instance and we know that he wound up in Egypt and Persia and seems to have been on the move quite a bit throughout his life. People didn't have the luxury of digital transmission so it was pretty commonplace to just go where the getting was good as much as possible...

m1thr0s

[Amur]

This is something I don't really get, from the Gospel of Thomas.
"16. Jesus said, "Perhaps people think that I have come to cast peace upon the world. They do not know that I have come to cast conflicts upon the earth: fire, sword, war.

For there will be five in a house: there'll be three against two and two against three, father against son and son against father, and they will stand alone."

Why make war on Earth? And who's on war with whom? Atleast it feels like some alien force is 'eating up' Earth and causing alot of havoc and corruption. They have even threathened me that if I continue my path they will make me suffer tremendously. Quite odd really.

**edit note: Seriously it feels JUST like this: http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2672 (I also like to give the finger when those 'events' happen hehe )

[deviadah]

I think it is all about the internal. There is a deeper self that most of us never get in contact with because it would be too scary... and it could, actually, lead to suicide (death, self-war etc)...

I have been at war with myself and if such a battle is won it only moves me further along the path of enlightenment. If one does not question, one does very little.

The numbers (2 + 3) and Earth along with Father and Son all have a deeper meaning if interpreted alchemically... I also see the battle between the man and the superman in your quote!

2 = duality/polarity
3 = trinity

I.E. we should move from 2 into 3... or more so form a unity with both thus creating 5!

:cool:

[m1thr0s]

I dunno...I'm personally of the opinion that Xst was a satanist...

try selling that shit on your average street corner...yet the facts all seem to support it.

Confrontation, man...the cat was seriously confrontational...in your freaking face transmutationist...the power of the god within etc...we don't see it so much now that it's been hacked to shit over a 2000 year stretch but those accustomed to the Law of Moses were totally convinced this cat was the devil incarnate!

him and his girfriend whatsername...and what's up with that? Even his closest disciples were totally freaked out by that shit...

So I'm keeping my wager right where it stands...odds or no odds.

m1thr0s

[Catalytic Subterfuge]

Well, there is, I'm sure, a good deal of pressure after being raised to the christ conscious. A satanist, perhaps in form. Master Jesus did teach that every human had the same potential to find union with the cosmic conscious or (god). More importantly, he taught that we did NOT need intermediaries to attain this union. This really pissed off the priests as they then, would no longer be employed. Hence, they didn't get along too well.

[fr.novumorganum]

I'm not much for christian doctrine or such, but i've always found liberation theology very interesting...the christ figure also spoke a lot about social transformation...not needing an intermediary to reach the kingdom in the divine world is a lot like not needing a ruling class to administer the kingdom in this world

[frater luciferi]

if yeshuah was real...he was certainly a perfect example of the adversary archetype... and if i remember correctly the original "proto-satan" had a lot in common with him...that might shock a lot but if you take the new testament literally ..well sifting through the damn thing one finds a lot of examples of how he totally contradicted the churches policys ..on a lot of things, and pretty much was a decent crucible of the cause of "Truth and justice"..the two highest principles of a revolutionary.

the world needed cleansing and it still does- fire is a esoteric metaphor for cleansing in a way so that makes sense....every religion grows old and tedious and loses its spiritual roots ironically enough, and when they are faced with the curse of a "true believer" like yeshuah, who not only knew the rabbinical law quite well he used it against them? i mean doesn that in a way put him in the "heretic" box?

if jeshuah comes back and fullfills the prophecy of him returning once again as a morning star.. i have a feeling that he's going to be equally hard on the christian churchs continuation of his legacy...and its three times as hypocritical as the pharisees were in their day..

i like jesus..im still amazed how such a great teachers relgion got so much of the jist of his ideam wrong...its sickening.

[Amur]

For some reason, the scent I get, through my abnormal senses, of Christianity tells that it's actually quite sarcastic and that ironically those following the religion are actually on the other side lol. Since it all got corrupted from start anyway so why not add a REAL FIRE to the whole friggin Egregore?!? And looking at how USA is ironically so Christian I find it very funny to see that USA probably has the dumbest population on Earth. What does that tell us really?

In this Dreamtime & Inner Space "The World of the Shaman", the writer tells of a native american medicine man who had a vision where he left his body and went to another place and there he met Jesus personally, and he told him that the white man's religion would only do harm to the native americans and that they should stay away from it.

[m1thr0s]

i like jesus..im still amazed how such a great teachers relgion got so much of the jist of his ideam wrong...its sickening.Xst confined himself to the "kingdom of heaven"...the HRC was all about an earthly empire from its inception...otherwise...who the f*ck even needed it? I think it's pretty evident they figured that one out right from the start...

m1thr0s

[Amur]

I'm still surprised why ppl don't talk about the "Kingdom of Earth", and with this I mean how things should be lol. But it's funny, because now that humanity got to space and actually got pictures of their own planet, the thing is starting to turn blue....

[m1thr0s]

For some reason, the scent I get, through my abnormal senses, of Christianity tells that it's actually quite sarcastic and that ironically those following the religion are actually on the other side lol.I'm not sure if it's sarcasm exactly, but Xian doctrine as I have observed it is packed tight with logical "gaps" and these gaps - ultimately - give rise to varying degrees of dissent. It's almost as if it was crafted to implode, or otherwise erode from within. Whether conscious or unconscious I cannot be sure, though I don't think there is very much chance that it was a conscious design personally. But the end result is that Xianity has given rise to more philosophical divergences than just about any other religion you can name.

So I do find this interesting. Occultism, as we know it, is very nearly an exclusive by-product of Xian fundamentalism...not so much because it draws from its tenets as that it is fueled by these logical gaps...if there were no such gaps there would be no need for an alternative philosophy to plug them. I have to marvel sometimes at the tactical genius, whether seen or unseen, that would launch a carefully orchestrated dogma with a built-in detonation mechanism, pre-installed as part of the overall package! And of course, not everyone will see this...that's one of the most intriguing aspects of it...if you don't suffer anything from these gaps then you go along with the crowd and be as *good* a person as you can be and collect your heavenly reward at the end. No muss, no fuss, no matter...

But if that strikes you as just a little hard to swallow, then you probably do suffer from these gaps and you have other choices to make that will almost certainly lead to one or another degrees of personal dissent. Not so much dissent from God necessarily, but dissent from the prevailing dogma of Xianity Inc.. There is very little middle ground on this. It's almost like a religion designed for small children in this respect. Grownups aren't actually expected to believe much of it anyway, unless they happen to be painfully naive adults.

I have observed this pattern and never quite known what to make of it but it happens to be one of the defining characteristics of Xianity if you can stand back from it far enough to see it. On the flip-side, *monsters* is another of its by-products and there can be little doubt that Xianity has produced a startling percentage of monsters. It almost smacks of a calculated risk...you can't design a religion for children that responsible adults are expected to reject without also catering to both the weak and the monstrous. Among their other responsibilities, it falls to the (disenfranchised) adults to dispatch these monsters as well. But as I say, I don't actually believe any of this has been conscious at the human level...if there is a hand of God in this, I think He/She/It is playing a very dangerous game. I can only imagine it must be motivated from necessity in that event and may just as well be something attributable to *collective consciousness* as much (or more) as to God.

I've never actually discussed this before and I think it's fairly apparent why not...it's an extremely complex thought-construct but I have become increasingly convinced of its validity over time. It may have an impact on people's choices to at least look at this from time to time since I think that many of us know already on some level of our being that the choice to *rebel* against so-called God and Religion is an act of supreme self-responsibility at the highest levels and has little-to-nothing to do with some sort of adolescent complaint against the Universe and/or its Governing Intelligence. It may sometimes start out this way but if it persists it persists because it evolves into something much deeper than this. It is, in all usual respects, synonymous with *growing up*.

m1thr0s

[Amur]

Funny that you put into words the exact thoughts I also had about Xtianity. I've also noticed this 'eroding from within' in it. There's just too much crap in the bible to be able to
hold it for any real authenticity. The funniest part is that many of the Xtians claim that the Bible is the "Word of God". Well if that is true I would certainly kill this God on sight. Or atleast throw him into a Dungeon. Another funny thing is that in the finnish language the Bible is 'Raamattu', which is exactly the equivalence of meaning 'Framed'. A bit like a painting is framed. In a way this is exactly how I see the Bible, it has 'catched' all that crap from around itself and embedded it into itself, the funniest part will be when this whole place Fire's up and people can actually feel the Truth within and then come back to the Bible to read somethings that have been put into it. Of course it has also good parts...

It's funny because my life has gone so that when I went into the Nature I noticed this God-Form which was in all cases my future Self. So basically I was God in all senses. Then when I went into the City, this God-self 'got forbidden', and there was somekind of idiotic external God pulling on the strings of humanity to get them to do stuff and my God-Self was a Sin. In a way this just pisses me off. The same thing I could see with the sun. When the sun came up 'It' was God in a sense and there were no Other God But Him uaaaargh, then again when Night came and the Stars were visible, there were no God, but there were Gods, and those Gods were actually the people themselves. The same thing happened when I actually opened up my pineal gland. It started to produce a near physical light (I'm sure it's actually measurable with physical instruments), others could see this light also on the top of my head and for me it just felt like I connected to the stars above with it. When this happened there was no God whatsoever because I was God. Or actually I was even beyond that. What amazes me is that the Indian's created somekind of 'fake crown' that is the Thousand-Petaled Lotus. Atleast for me it was something more than that, and I certainly saw no unity while activating it, I only saw individuality and uniqueness. "Sahasrara chakra symbolizes detachment from illusion; an essential element in obtaining supramental higher consciousness of the truth that one is all and all is one." What utter crap imo heh. I was certainly not all, and all was not me, I was unique and there was none like me for there were only other unique Gods/Goddesses.

Sometime a thought popped up that 'they' created God-concept for humanity, and in the end the curtain would fall and people would become God in their own way. In this way I actually feel that people are coming home to themselves.