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Back to Podcast EpisodesThe Key to Gnostic Cosmology
Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. I think we’ve got a lot of new listeners now and new subscribers. And since you haven’t been with us from the beginning, I’d like to review the Gnostic cosmology.
A basic premise of Gnosticism is that we are all born with gnosis inherent within us. We already have the answers. We already are our perfect Selves. But because of the nature of the never-ending war that we find ourselves in here in this material cosmos, we forget our inherent nature. And we begin to engage in the war through what the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi calls the law of mutual combat. That being, since we are attacked, we attack back. And then we engage in that back and forth enough that we completely forget our mission and our goal and who we are.
So today, I want to run through what I call the illustrated Gnostic cosmology. And I’m putting the illustration into the transcript so that if you are listening to this as an audio podcast, you really would do well to go to GnosticInsights.com or to my Substack location, the Gnostic Reformation, under the name of Cyd Ropp, so that you can see the illustration that we’re talking about.
Now, when you first look at this Gnostic cosmology, it’s very strange looking, and it’s probably incomprehensible. But by the time I talk you through this, you’ll be able to follow the steps. There are 15 steps in this Gnostic cosmology. And once you recognize these stations, then you will literally understand Gnosis. You will remember your Gnosis, and you’ll understand what all of the various versions of Gnosticism have been trying to say.
One reason is that this is a pictorial presentation. It’s not just words, because I’ve noticed when reading the various books of the Nag Hammadi, for example, some of which are Valentinian Gnosticism, some of which are Sethian Gnosticism, some are straight-out Greek philosophy by Plato. They use different words, but the concepts are the same. So what I always attempt to do is to level up to a meta-level, above the words, and envision and then picture it so that you can describe it with the words you prefer. So let’s get started.
The background image of this entire Gnostic cosmology key I picture as pure inky blackness, like the sky with no stars or moons. That is the ground state of consciousness. And that is the Father’s mind. Now the Father is another one of these words where many people would like to disagree with saying Father. They want to say Source, or, for example, as it is called in the Secret Book of John, the One, the Parent, the Invisible Spirit. However, in the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi, which is the book that I mainly use as a reference, that initial, illimitable consciousness is called the Father.
Now, that’s the ground state. That’s the first principle. Consciousness is not a byproduct of the little gray cells. Consciousness predates everything. Consciousness is part of the existence of God, and it is the very first thing before
Published on 1 month, 1 week ago