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Gnostic Quotes

Browse 37 quotes about Gnostic.

Gnostic Quotes

“However it—or the kind of extreme individualistic epistemology it embraces—can lead historians to an overly skeptical approach particularly to those sources that were intended to recount and inform events of the past, that is, testimony in this restricted sense. Particularly in Gospels scholarship there is an attitude abroad that approaches the sources with fundamental skepticism, rather than trust, and therefore requires that anything the sources claim be accepted only if historians can independently verify it…..”

“Equally, it does not mean that Christian beliefs cause more distortion than other ideological beliefs. This emerged with particular clarity in engaging with the opinion that Jesus did not exist. This view is demonstrably false. It is fuelled by a regrettable form of atheist prejudice, which holds all the main primary sources, and Christian people, in contempt. This is not merely worse than the American Jesus Seminar, it is no better than Christian fundamentalism. It simply has different prejudices.”

“Gnosticism is undeniably pre-Christian, with both Jewish and gentile roots. The wisdom of Solomon already contained Gnostic elements and prototypes for the Jesus of the Gospels...God stops being the Lord of righteous deed and becomes the Good One...A clear pre-Christian Gnosticism can be distilled from the epistles of Paul. Paul is recklessly misunderstood by those who try to read anything Historical Jesus-ish into it. The conversion of Paul in the Acts of the Apostles is a mere forgery from various Tanakh passages... [The epistles] are from Christian mystics of the middle of the second century. Paul is thus the strongest witness against the Historical Jesus hypothesis...John's Gnostic origin is more evident than that of the synoptics. Its acceptance proves that even the Church wasn't concerned with historical facts at all.”

“When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until at last I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure that they had attained a certain 'gnosis'--had more or less successfully solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion ... So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'. It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the 'gnostic' of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our Society, to show that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes.”

“Who needs an external God? No one in the Church of the Serpent does. Two can play the Expulsion Game. If God expels us from his Eden, we can expel him from our Eden, because we ourselves are now gods. The Olympian gods replaced the older generation of gods, the Titans. The old gods are always replaced. The Biblical God, too, must be replaced.”

“Consider that the Dragon, the hive-mind overlord forever whispering self-destructive notions in your ear to extract more of your energy for food, usually wants you to keep talking. The very last thing it needs is for you to shut up when your dander is up and you’re on the verge of opening your mouth and inserting your foot. Shamans and energetic alchemists maintain that inner silence can be a sign of the Dragon losing its grip on your mind. Outer silence, especially when called for in challenging circumstances, can be a sign that you’re starting to experience inner quietude.”

“So many things are put out to make it seem as if we’re helpless victims of this crazy Matrix. This is the purpose of such lopsided half-truths as the popular (and for that reason alone, highly dubious) notion that we’re stuck against our will in a ‘soul trap’ or ‘reincarnation trap’ that most people will never escape.”

“In Arabic to say, for example, "Wisdom is precious," you could repeat the feminine pronoun: al-hikmah hiya thamînah, literally "Wisdom, she is precious." It is stated by some Sûfî Sheikhs (Masters) that Sûfîsm originally was named Sophia, which connects Sûfîsm with the Christian Gnostic tradition, in which Wisdom is personified as a woman, the divine Sophia. The physical mother of Jesus was an external image of manifestation of the Virgin Sophia, the word 'Sophia' stemming from Sophos (wisdom). The Gnostics, whose language was Greek, identified the Holy Spirit with Sophia, Wisdom; and Wisdom was considered female.”

“Transhumanism and the rise of cyborgs will increasingly move humanity from a profound and direct experience with the Divine. Science and academic research are very important for humanity’s growth and evolution as human beings on this planet. The danger lies in the overly sentimental and simple-minded concepts of religion and spirituality that are popular themes in today’s spiritual books. True spirituality is something that is as complex, and at the same time subtle, as the most advanced study of particle physics. A person must devote many years of study, meditation, prayer and other spiritual disciplines, in order to properly develop himself or herself spiritually. Humanity, at this time, must let go of the illusion that true spirituality consists of a kind of emotional “high,” or on the other hand, that true spirituality consists of a kind of militaristic, fanatically disciplinarian obedience to a vast list of rules and regulations.”

“To have a knee-jerk reaction to technology is to think like a victim. This is how the Dragon wants you to think—in all ways at all times. Its entire control apparatus is predicated on your tacit or explicit acceptance of victim mentality. I’d argue that this even applies to the world’s predatory class, the so-called elites, those puffed-up minions who, while they may get a rush out of preying on others, must on some level suspect they themselves are ultimately just Dragon food. But we, not technology, and not even the Dragon, are the real creators here. The Dragon knows this. That’s why it uses us to build its world for it, since apparently it can’t do so on its own—and it’s high time we figured this out for ourselves.”

“By standing up to our fears, examining our darkness and reassembling our fragmented selves, we undergo a profound metamorphosis ... provided we’re up to the challenge of seeing the world for what it is: a product of our own projections that have been manipulated for something else’s benefit.”

“The inorganic intelligence calling the shots in this place uses people’s own powerfully creative psyches to generate an energy farm (which we rather cavalierly call the world) to sustain … itself! Truly, the masses—like thrashing, masochistic puppets controlled from above by emotional strings—are living in a hell of their own largely unconscious making.”

“But even if we ignore the Dragon’s energy harvesting through cultivation of varying levels of mental illness in its human herd, we can safely say there’s a complex web of tech companies, advertisers and governments all trying, spider-like, to trap our attention for a variety of reasons—most of which probably aren’t in our best interests. Tech companies want to keep us super-glued to our screens at all costs, advertisers want to sell us stuff we don’t need, and governments … Well, let’s just say that these artificial entities explicitly designed to govern the mente (mind) aren’t exactly hiding (except in plain sight) their primary agenda.”

“And becoming aware of one's true inner nature, instinctive gut feelings, is not generally thought by those who experience it to be in conflict with the essence of one's spiritual knowledge, but more of a Gnostic direct experience of the Sacred experienced in the gut or all of nature that is greater than us and is connected to us through the gut instincts.”

“We drank the blood of our enemies. That's why you see Gnostics so hunted. The sacrament of the Eucharist is really drinking the blood of the enemy. The Grail, the Sangraal, is the bloody vehicle. Why else guard it so sacredly? Why should the black honor-guard ride half a continent, half a splintering Empire, stone night and winter day, if it's only for the touch of sweet lips on a humble bowl? No, it's mortal sin they're carrying: to swallow the enemy, down into the slick juicery to be taken in by all the cells. Your officially defined 'mortal sin,' that is. A sin against you. A section of your penal code, that's all.”

“Mary’s insistence of seeing people’s Divine Spark is in line with the Gnostic view of seeking and knowing one’s divinity to do away with the world of ignorance.”

“Welcome to the Church of the Serpent. The universe is the Tree of Knowledge. At the top of the tree is the Golden Bough with which we attain Golden Knowledge, the Apex Knowledge of the cosmos. So, we must climb. All the way to the highest consciousness. The Church of the Serpent is devoted to knowledge – ultimate knowledge, the knowledge of existence itself. We must have Absolute Knowledge. Nothing else will suffice. Completion, or nothing. From the top of the Tree of Knowledge, we shall command all knowledge. Like Faust, we will make a pact with any force to reach our goal. Like Prometheus, we will steal from the gods and risk any punishment to secure our ends. Like the Cimmerians, we will travel from the deepest darkness, where the sun never shines, to the brightest light. Like the Hyperboreans, we seek the perfect land where the sun always shines, yet we Hyperborean Apollonians must be able to return to Dionysian Cimmeria to enjoy the intoxication of the dark.”