..thanks joedirt..i'll look into my own personal reflections on gnosticism as time goes on, but for now i'll try to define 'classic' gnosticism..

Global wrote: ..i'm glad you found a resonance..interestingly there is no agreed upon interpretation of The Thunder: Perfect Mind.. some think it is about Sophia (Psitis, or 'wisdom'), others about the 'soul'..?

clasical gnosticism is very unlike judeo-christian monotheism

..a breif description of ancient Gnostic cosmology is called for..

..Gnosticism comes from a point of view of attempting to explain the troubles and divisions in the world (or the mind) rather than seeking to exclude all externality in the way some eastern paths do..it was also highly critical of traditional church power structures..spiritual truth, they said, should be directly experienced by the observant (gnosis), not dictated by a priest or dogma..hence the Nag Hammadi collection, under a single editorial group, comprises various contrasting and different forms of gnosticism - from christian to almost 'pagan'..'abracadara' was a gnostic magical key word used in ritual, one of the few things known about the Gnostics except for what their persecutors wrote prior to the discovery at Nag Hammadi in1945..

they were branded heretics by the roman church for, amongst other crimes, allowing women and men to worship in the same room, and allowing discussion of deities/entities outside of orthodox christianity..

..the various gnostic strands are connected by a common upper level cosmology..

all things come from the Source..it is limitless and incomprehensible, but is also described in Greek as being 'alien'..the Source is alien in the absolute sense, as in 'not from here'..

for reasons mysterious to all, two 'fragments' or 'sparks' came out of the Source into the shadow (which is above the abyss)

..these were a masculine principle (Yaldaboath, or Samael) and a feminine (Sophia or Psitis), in some versions Yaldaboath is derived from or birthed by Sophia, in other versions they appear independently..

what we think of as our universe is the interaction between these two 'universes'..

they each multiply divided into billions of 'Aeons' arising in archangels down to beings like humans

..Yaldaboath, or Samael the 'blind-god' became deluded..he took the light of Sophia to be a reflection of his own, and became convinced that he alone existed in the void and created..her attempts reveal herself drove him mad..

..but humans contain (as all things) the same spark of the Source, hence they can know the truth..this, and Sophia's attempts to 'tunnel into' his co-existing twin universe, led him to become demented and create a 'prison-world' for conscious beings, governed and manipulated by the Archons..

gnostics seek to dissolve the prison and illusions of the blind god by allowing Sophia's universe to merge with ours, and seeking direct knowledge of the Source..

the internal mental dynamic reflects the cosmic principle (there is much Hermetic philosophy scattered in the texts)

Global wrote: ..i like that..the ancient gnostics spent a lot of time looking at what apparently prevents this...the mysterious scholar who authored The Thunder: Perfect Mind came from a mysterious more poetic, ritual and unifying school within ancient gnosticism..knowing the Source is the key..

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here from the ancient Nag Hammadi scrolls is the opening of

On the Origin of the World [Translated by Hans-Gebhard Bethge and Bentley Layton] On the Origin of the World - Bethge and Layton - The Nag Hammadi Library there are slightly different versions of the same concept in various scrolls, this probably either  Manichaen or Greek-philosophic text is from a sizeable view that the 'god' of the Hebrews/Christians is corrupt, and not the Source...

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