Gnosticism: Views, Opinions, and My Understanding Thus Far

Gnosticism came into my awareness while in high school- living in the Bible Belt, a daughter of Southern Baptist missionaries, I went down an obsessive wormhole reading about various religions, trying to figure out where I fit in, considering my misgivings about the religion I’d been raised in. At a certain point, during a rather ambivalent phase, I was teetering between atheist or agnostic. Upon looking up what ‘agnostic’ literally mean- without knowledge- I stumbled upon the word gnosis. I was struck deeply by this idea of having direct, mystical knowledge, experience, and understanding of the divine and that the divine was, in fact, a part of us- not some creepy holy spirit coming into us when we call upon it like a possessive entity in a horror movie. I tattooed the alchemical symbols on my fingers- air, water, earth, fire, and spirit- at 17, a reminder that I was made of all of life, too. I then realized that the Gnostics were often called “Christian Mystics” and while mysticism was something I was deeply interested in, Christianity was not. So I wrote it off for a time, not returning to fully study it for years- simply maintaining the idea that some spark of life, of light, lived within me and therefore I (maybe) was not doomed.

I want to preface this now: while many of my personal beliefs, opinions, and viewpoints align with that of Gnosticism, I do not fully agree with all that has been laid out within its texts and teachings. In a nutshell, the Gnostics believe salvation comes from direct experience of the divine and the remembrance that we carry a spark of the divine within. They believe the spiritual realm is perfect and pure, while the material realm is evil and corrupt. They do not believe that the world- the material universe- was created by (God, Spirit, Source, what have you), rather by a corrupt being created out of line with divine law: Sophia, an aeon (an emanation of the Divine God) existing within the Pleroma (the realm of divine fullness), departed from her syzygy (complementary divine attributes)- Sophia being wisdom, her syzygy being Jesus, logos- and proceeded to create outside of the Divine’s blessing… on her own, without Jesus. Thus Yaldabaoth, or the Demiurge, was born and created Earth, under the impression that it itself was the supreme creator god. Jesus then descended to Earth to save Sophia from her fall, remind humanity of the divine spark held within them (imparted by Sophia), and return Sophia to her rightful place within the Pleroma.

Now, I’ve explained all of this in podcast episodes devoted to unpacking the Demiurge. During that phase of episodes, I thought it was going to be just that- a phase, something I’d pondered on for some time, needed to get out into the open, and then move on. I was wrong. Dismantling the demiurgic energies that are rife within our personal energetic systems as well as the systems that surround us has slowly become my absolute focus over the past few years. So here we are, me talking about the Demiurge and Gnosticism yet again.

As I said above, I don’t fully align with all that you might find within the Gnostic tradition. I’m going to share some of what I’ve experienced, seen, and understood during my own etheric research of this entire religion- and as I do, I want to be quite clear that I am not stating any of this as truth. I’m simply sharing what I’ve learned, where I agree and disagree with the Gnostic belief system, and so on. Buckle up.

The Gnostic creation-of-earth story never sat right with me. The Earth is alive, the Demiurge is not. I’m not going to swallow another tale about how a woman fucked up the Earth due to her own hubris and thus a man had to play knight in shining armour (turned martyr in order to receive coerced worship) in order to save all of humanity. I’ve watched women across history be demonized, infantilized, have any form of opinion or fire smothered right out of them in order to play either the villain or the supporting character for the man- always the man- to be the ruler of all creation. I want to say, also, that this isn’t a tirade against men. I, actually, do not hate men. What I do not support is the villainizing of women and the absolute imbalance between women and men, form and formless, etc. The idea of the Demiurge, however, made quite a lot of sense to me. Since I was 12 years old, I felt something off within the church, the pastors, the priests, the sermons, and most importantly- the God I was told to let into my heart. The being I was meant to kneel to in order to obtain salvation from the gates of fiery hell. That God is angry, selfish, jealous, blood thirsty, and frankly egomaniacal. It needs worship in order to continue. It works in shame, enslavement, and fear. Enter the Demiurge. It is ego driven, believes it is the supreme creator, and lashes out when its authority is questioned. (Hello Sunday school teachers getting upset when questioned about their god, ahem…) When it finally landed for me that the Christian god- amongst many other gods- and the devil that many are taught to fear are the exact same entity, simply wearing different masks, it felt like my entire world reorganized itself into truth. God/Devil = same thing = Demiurge. It’s a narcissistic abusive relationship. The one the does harm is also the one that heals you, keeping you in an endless loop of returning. Where did the Demiurge come from, though? How was the Earth created? Here we go.

There are plenty of creation stories out there. In Christianity, God got bored and lonely, took 7 days to create the heavens and the Earth, Lucifer rebelled, Eve ate the apple, and so on. In Norse mythology, flecks of fire from the realm of Muspelheim met with the freezing ice of Niflheim in the void of Ginnungagap- two opposites creating life. The Greeks had Chaos, who created Nyx. The two created Erebus, who then incestuously created Aether and Hemera… so on, and on, and on. The aforementioned Gnostic creation story is dismal- a fallen world and its fallen creatures, created out of balance, attempting to remember the divine spark within. I’ve say with all of this, and more, for years. I’ve sat in meditation, in the Records, clearing out the distortions of religion and ego and arrived in a place of: I simply want to see where the spark of life within me came from. Not to feel special or become enlightened, simply to understand. This is what I was shown over the course of months, years, of just sitting:

There was light- formeless- and there was dark- form. The two came together, forming consciousness. Within that consciousness, they split off, expanded, creating experience. Universes. Galaxies. Worlds. Beings. Life. A particle kept splitting, and splitting, and splitting. Very little of life remained as this particle split, and thus it began replicating, growing like a cancerous tumour. I watched as this tumour was drawn back in toward life- the universes, the galaxies, the worlds- in its need to consume, to feed, to maintain. Like a mosquito it latched on to a life-filled world, it extracted life and consciousness and this beautiful, liquid light- and in return, injected its own poison, its own lack of life, into this once life-filled space. I watched as the beings of this world turned from liquid light into something hard, something artificial, and these beings watched as their own life, their own world, withered and died. The tumour released itself from this world and moved on to the next. Growing in some form of ‘consciousness’ (in that it had thoughts, a mission, now). Growing into a being with energy rather than a blob in deep space. On and on this went, more and more it learned.. it grew smart, savvy, in its ability to usurp communities, lands, worlds. Becoming the god, feeding off the citizens and the life. It learned how to maintain control. So here we are: a world quite seriously dominated by, what I’m currently referring to because I don’t have a better word for it, the Demiurge. This Gnostic belief, the need to remember the fact that we carry a divine spark within us, is I believe the key to kicking this usurper god out. (The way we do that is through clearing it from our systems… this is what we do in The Underworld Journey and The Aether Portal)

I type all of this with the understanding that I sound insane and that it all sounds like a sci-fi fantasy book summary. It makes sense to me, though. It doesn’t have to make sense to you, and again, I’m not stating this as fact- I’m not out here trying to be a prophet or a channel that screams THIS IS TRUTH to anyone who will listen. I’m simply sharing, what I’ve been sitting with for a long time, and if it resonates, cool. If not, also cool.

Soon I will share how I see the Demiurgic energies operating within us, our world, our systems, etc. But for now, sit with this and reach out with any questions or if you’d like to discuss the topic.