/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15757725]

Is gnosticism more relevant than ever?

[Anonymous No.15757737]

>>15757725
deemgurg :D

[Anonymous No.15757741]

>>15757725
there are like 4 people in every country in the world that care about gnosticism and they are apparently all on /lit/

[Anonymous No.15757763]

>>15757725
no. its litterally just a convent easy to understand version of the divine that allows psueds think they are deep when it is rather surface level in epistemological foundations. just be a buhdist or a christian or a perenialist, or something.

[Anonymous No.15757794]

>>15757763
what are gnosticism's epistemological foundations

[Anonymous No.15757826]

>>15757794
creator god create spiritual world, so somehow left and demiurge took place and created the material world of pain and bad. all that is good is from the original spiritual. and we trying to get past these chains of the material for the divine. quite a few assumptions that are more in line with a scripture or mythology rather than a firm epistemological grounding like in thomism or high buhdism.

[Anonymous No.15757828]

>>15757794
YHVH is a semitic desert demon and it should be destroyed.

[Anonymous No.15757846]

>>15757826
it's in the name: Gnosticism. they're fundamentally unconcerned with epistemology. if you believe the cosmos is drowning in evil, thomist autism starts to look like a recreational activity

[Anonymous No.15757868]

Does anyone have the extended picture of this with Stirner flying off into the void at the very top? Thanks in advance

[Anonymous No.15757920]

>>15757725
>>15757846
You Christcucks become angrier towards Gnosticism rather than Pisslam. I think Gnosticism strikes a nerve in you idiots.

[Anonymous No.15757932]

>>15757920
1,500 years after the "eradication" of gnosticism as a heresy and they still can't get rid of it. couliano is right in that it appeals to something a bit more primordial in the human mind than just the socio-historical circumstances of the day

[Anonymous No.15757963]

>>15757741
It'd be cool if Elaine Pagels posted on /lit/

[Anonymous No.15757977]

>I liked simulation theory before it was cool

[Anonymous No.15757988]

>>15757977
simulation theory is a vulgarization of platonic dualism pushed and peddled by rubes, proles, and lumpenproles. miss me with that shit

[Anonymous No.15758001]

>>15757920
>>15757932
Because Gnosticism is a completely natural first impulse for someone coming to spirituality and God. In fact, it's extremely well trodden ground and history shows that it is, quite literally, a road to hell. You're not unique my friend, but Gnosticism will always tempt you people I suppose. Enjoy your navel gazing

[Anonymous No.15758008]

>let's hodgepodge the symbols of egypt and pagan anatolia with a worse than literal interpretations of the bible and Plato

[Anonymous No.15758020]

>>15757932
Non-Gnostic Christians and Muslims are only interested in forgiveness rather than actually being good people. This is because deeds are secondary to faith in their retarded worldviews.

[Anonymous No.15758042]

>>15758008
Nooo only christianity can perform a transvaluation of the pagan worldview you c-can't do it to us nooo

[Anonymous No.15758047]

>>15758001
How does it feel to know your God is responsible for the conditions of all that bring tragedy and pain in your life?

[Anonymous No.15758089]

>>15758042
christians are also gnostics
anyone who wails at Nature is

But nature compels us to it. “Go out of this world,” says she, “as you entered into it; the same pass you made from death to life, without passion or fear, the same, after the same manner, repeat from life to death. Your death is a part of the order of the universe, ‘tis a part of the life of the world.
“Mortals, amongst themselves, live by turns, and, like the runners in the games, give up the lamp, when they have won the race, to the next comer.—” Lucretius, ii. 75, 78.]
“Shall I exchange for you this beautiful contexture of things? ‘Tis the condition of your creation; death is a part of you, and whilst you endeavour to evade it, you evade yourselves. This very being of yours that you now enjoy is equally divided betwixt life and death. The day of your birth is one day’s advance towards the grave:
[“The first hour that gave us life took away also an hour.” —Seneca, Her. Fur., 3 Chor. 874.]
[“As we are born we die, and the end commences with the beginning.” —Manilius, Ast., iv. 16.]
“All the whole time you live, you purloin from life and live at the expense of life itself. The perpetual work of your life is but to lay the foundation of death. You are in death, whilst you are in life, because you still are after death, when you are no more alive; or, if you had rather have it so, you are dead after life, but dying all the while you live; and death handles the dying much more rudely than the dead, and more sensibly and essentially. If you have made your profit of life, you have had enough of it; go your way satisfied.

[Anonymous No.15758107]

>>15758089
Of course, look at the implicit dualism of the Gospel of John.

[Anonymous No.15758119]

>>15758089
>>15758107
There is nothing truly dualistic in mainstream Abrahamic faiths. Read Book of Job. All Christians, Muslims, and Jews are secretly Satanists because they believe evil can be integrated with the good.

[Anonymous No.15758126]

>>15758047
good man, i don't try and know the mind of God because that's extreme hubris

[Anonymous No.15758135]

>>15758126
Too late. You've already projected your hubris onto God. God is just a reflection of your petty power complex.

[Anonymous No.15758139]

>>15758089
“Why not depart from life as a sated guest from a feast? Lucretius, iii. 951.
If you have not known how to make the best use of it, if it was unprofitable to you, what need you care to lose it, to what end would you desire longer to keep it?
“Why seek to add longer life, merely to renew ill-spent time, and be again tormented?”—Lucretius, iii. 914.]
Life in itself is neither good nor evil; it is the scene of good or evil as you make it.’ And, if you have lived a day, you have seen all: one day is equal and like to all other days. There is no other light, no other shade; this very sun, this moon, these very stars, this very order and disposition of things, is the same your ancestors enjoyed, and that shall also entertain your posterity:
“Your grandsires saw no other thing; nor will your posterity.” —Manilius, i. 529.
And, come the worst that can come, the distribution and variety of all the acts of my comedy are performed in a year. If you have observed the revolution of my four seasons, they comprehend the infancy, the youth, the virility, and the old age of the world: the year has played his part, and knows no other art but to begin again; it will always be the same thing:
“We are turning in the same circle, ever therein confined.” —Lucretius, iii. 1093.
The year is ever turning around in the same footsteps.” —Virgil, Georg., ii. 402.
I am not prepared to create for you any new recreations:
“I can devise, nor find anything else to please you: ‘tis the same thing over and over again.”—Lucretius iii. 957
Give place to others, as others have given place to you. Equality is the soul of equity. Who can complain of being comprehended in the same destiny, wherein all are involved? Besides, live as long as you can, you shall by that nothing shorten the space you are to be dead; ‘tis all to no purpose; you shall be every whit as long in the condition you so much fear, as if you had died at nurse:
“Live triumphing over as many ages as you will, death still will remain eternal.”—Lucretius, iii. 1103
And yet I will place you in such a condition as you shall have no reason to be displeased.
“Know you not that, when dead, there can be no other living self to lament you dead, standing on your grave.”—Idem., ibid., 898.
Nor shall you so much as wish for the life you are so concerned about: “Death is less to be feared than nothing, if there could be anything less than nothing.

[Anonymous No.15758145]

>>15758119
Well, Couliano says that the gnostics, paradoxically, were trying to soften the dualism between God and the darkness of the waters in Genesis, by rolling up the Darkness into a ball that is illicitly generated by Sophia, etc. But I'm basically nitpicking.

>All Christians, Muslims, and Jews are secretly Satanists because they believe evil can be integrated with the good.

Without a doubt. It astounds me how many Christians end up sounding like one Job's compadres whenever the problem of evil is raised. A religion of simps and sycophants.

[Anonymous No.15758150]

>>15758047
Based boomer God not allowing vices to take over by testing and judging us every day. One day, Old Father, I will be worthy.

[Anonymous No.15758151]

>>15758047
What if He does something in the future that validates the "tragedy and pain" in life?
Like I dunno, offer Godhood to those that eventually finish the race.

It's almost as if God became Man so that Man could become like God. Where have I heard that line before...

[Anonymous No.15758155]

>>15758126
So evil can be excused so long as its creator is powerful enough? You would rather accept evil than the sin of pride?

[Anonymous No.15758157]

>>15758135
I don't think so my man, but you keep doing you. I'll be here if you ever want to stop blackpilling yourself and want to join a community of people united in love and real human feeling.

[Anonymous No.15758166]

>>15758151
So he solves the problems he created, poisons us to make us grateful for the antidote. Now where have I heard that line before...

>>15758150
An omnipotent God doesn't have to use suffering to test us.

[Anonymous No.15758172]

>>15758157
>I don't think so my man, but you keep doing you. I'll be here if you ever want to stop blackpilling yourself and want to join a community of people united in love and real human feeling.

That's what the Cathars were, and you exterminated them lol

[Anonymous No.15758174]

>>15758157
You can't know true love because your God is a psychopath who blurs the line between good and evil.

[Anonymous No.15758197]

>>15758139
Neither can it any way concern you, whether you are living or dead: living, by reason that you are still in being; dead, because you are no more. Moreover, no one dies before his hour: the time you leave behind was no more yours than that was lapsed and gone before you came into the world; nor does it any more concern you.

“Consider how as nothing to us is the old age of times past.” —Lucretius iii. 985]

Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little. Make use of time while it is present with you. It depends upon your will, and not upon the number of days, to have a sufficient length of life. Is it possible you can imagine never to arrive at the place towards which you are continually going? and yet there is no journey but hath its end. And, if company will make it more pleasant or more easy to you, does not all the world go the self-same way?

“All things, then, life over, must follow thee.” —Lucretius, iii. 981.

Does not all the world dance the same brawl that you do? Is there anything that does not grow old, as well as you? A thousand men, a thousand animals, a thousand other creatures, die at the same moment that you die:
“No night has followed day, no day has followed night, in which there has not been heard sobs and sorrowing cries, the companions of death and funerals.”—Lucretius, v. 579.]

>>15758119
Evil does not exist in essence, only in act away from the Good. But he will through Necessity weave all evil into Good greater than whatever would have been if the evil wasn't there.
Like the paradox that little is as beautiful as tragedy. Death and loss are forms of limit, and without limit all would be chaos, thus the "evil" in the world all bring forth true Good. Would a sunset that lasted forever be beautiful? Yet all perfect moments I hope you've had, though they last mere hours and seconds, are reflected unto eternity.

[Anonymous No.15758211]

>>15758197
>Would a sunset that lasted forever be beautiful?

Yes.

[Anonymous No.15758214]

>>15758172
>Cathars
Don't wish to rehash history the Bogomils and their heirs denied the Ecumenical Councils and revealed themselves to be non-Christians. It's important for believers to exist in communion with eachother in order to exist in communion with God. While it's possible that any or all of the mainline Christian denominations have gotten some things wrong, trusting in yourself is wrong. To do so is to anoint yourself as a prophet and pope. Christianity is nothing without the accumulated mass of wisdom of the Saints of the last two Millenia. The Bogomils thought themselves above the church fathers and denied them, of course they weren't Christian, they didn't even believe in Jesus!

[Anonymous No.15758226]

>>15758214
And of course, you exterminated them. Why does the House of God kill? because it isn't what it calls itself. you're an appendage of Empire, always have been, always will be.
While it's possible that any or all of the mainline Christian denominations have gotten some things wrong, trusting in yourself is wrong. To do so is to anoint yourself as a prophet and pope. Christianity is nothing without the accumulated mass of wisdom of the Saints of the last two Millenia.

lol, you sound like the Sanhedrin condemning Jesus. Round and round we go.
>

[Anonymous No.15758228]

>>15758197
>Would a sunset that lasted forever be beautiful?
Yes. You don't necessarily need contrast for bliss. The same applies for the evil of depravity or misery.
Evil is real. How else could you describe it as opposing the Good? Pic related.
If God is all-good, then he did not create Satan.

[Anonymous No.15758233]

>>15758228
Where's that image from? Zoroastrianism is based.

[Anonymous No.15758237]

>>15758047
Feels fine, because I know he'll set it right. Believing in Christ does no harm if Gnosticism is correct where as being Gnostic if Christ is real is going to be a real problem for you.

[Anonymous No.15758252]

>>15757725
me in the middle

[Anonymous No.15758256]

>>15758211
No, it would be a frozen painting without life or mind.

[Anonymous No.15758267]

>>15758256
No, you're confusing the concept of the good for the good itself. A world that is all red doesn't need the rainbow to be all red. Why is God constrained by this dialectic? I thought he was omnipotent?

[Anonymous No.15758273]

>>15758237
>my god shit on the floor and now he's gonna clean it up, hallelujah
Lmao

[Anonymous No.15758279]

>>15758228
a sunset includes the whole process of afternoon to twilight
The static is intrinsically opposed to what 'a sunset' is.

[Anonymous No.15758295]

>>15758279
all phenomena being time-bound is exactly why this system is demiurgic. only within a Limit can circularity be effective. the Demiurge is that Limit. abolish the Limit and we are returned to an original symmetry probably indistinguishable from the death-state. why do you think he's represented as the ouroboros?

[Anonymous No.15758313]

>>15757725
Nope. Psychology and science in general are.

[Anonymous No.15758314]

why is the demiurge such a fucking nigger?

[Anonymous No.15758320]

>>15758166
>So he solves the problems he created, poisons us to make us grateful for the antidote. Now where have I heard that line before...
...and you'll kiss His Divine Ass for it when you eventually find out the Truth.

[Anonymous No.15758322]

>>15758267
>dialectic
>constrained
God is the Unity of the Same and the Other, of the Limited and Unlimited, of the Monad and the Dyad, of Love and Strife.
With only the Monad there would only be him.
With only the Dyad there would be nothing, not even him.
Without the Unified there would be no reconciliation, no redemption, only unending strife; that is true dialectic. Life IS movement/change, the nature of Soul is the freedom to fall and the mercy of god is for us to rise again and lift others up with us, if you Will it. Freedom to love, not its compulsion (because that is not love, nor is it life), is at the heart of creation.

[Anonymous No.15758333]

>>15758322
only within the constraints of the system itself. you're telling me God is the unity of the turd and the punch bowl. you can keep it, not interested.

>>15758320
it's one thing to lick the boot of earthly authority, but a cosmic tyrant? hilarious

[Anonymous No.15758350]

>>15758295
The world is born from Dionysus choosing to die for multiplicity and choice to be.
You do realize that your great good causes what you call evil? Thus making him too evil, destroying pure good. This is the fundamental critique of Plotinus, the only one you need regardless of the flaws of his other ones. Gnostics unknowingly make their great Monad evil.

[Anonymous No.15758368]

>>15758350
>The world is born from Dionysus choosing to die for multiplicity and choice to be.
no, the infant Dionysus is kidnapped and devoured, not unlike the Manichaean First Man.

>You do realize that your great good causes what you call evil? Thus making him too evil, destroying pure good.

no, again, only within the constraints of the system itself. and it is Plotinus who makes the Monad evil, in that it can't help but distend itself into non-being = the principle or condition of evil. the pleromic good is absolutely alien to the dialectic of good and evil within the bounded system

[Anonymous No.15758376]

>>15758333
>only within the constraints of the system itself
Any type of multiplicity is otherness. Wihout otherness there is only Limit, only the Monad. What else is more limitating than singularity?
This is constraint, but Necessity. We weren't originally placed here, we all freely chose to peer down into the abyss, and in the abyss, like an empty mirror, we took shape.

[Anonymous No.15758401]

>>15758368
>no, the infant Dionysus is kidnapped and devoured
only because he left his throne, he being the heart of all souls, his myth is the legend of every soul's being down here. Just like he stepped down we all>>15758376
Unless you're a Guardian who is down here to guide souls to Olympus.

[Anonymous No.15758402]

>>15758333
>it's one thing to lick the boot of earthly authority, but a cosmic tyrant? hilarious
You'll come around. They all do eventually.

[Anonymous No.15758499]

People read Plato talking about bonds thinking they are demons or chains by the archons, when the bonds is our own soul fighting with herself. Like a conflict woman without a man to rule her we are slaves to ourselves. The only archons in our lives is your own unwillingness to power.

[jesus No.15758528]

>>15757725
any ism is pederastism

[Anonymous No.15759452]

>>15758228
Don't you know? There ain't no devil, there's just god when he's drunk.

[Anonymous No.15759507]

>>15757725
Refuted by Plotinus (pbuh)

[Anonymous No.15759886]

>>15757794
it revolves around the idea of gnosis, which is knowing in a more primordial sense than episteme or scientia. it's linked to the platonic idea of knowing as remembering, as opposed to discovery. knowledge of oneself is taken to be the key to knowledge of the universe.

[Anonymous No.15759972]

No, unfortunately we can't ever know 'Gnosticism' because it probably didn't and doesn't exist, it doesn't help that It's completely unpalatable politically.

[Anonymous No.15760022]

>>>/x/

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!oI3er5KKetj No.15760054]

>>15757725
No more or less so than the other heresies
Since they’re all false, people shop around, I did, till they fall into one of them or skip the whole embarrassing thing.

[Anonymous No.15760129]

If true God shouldn't be all-good, then evil can be explained without Demiurg middleman. And if true God is all-good, then why does he allows Demiurg?