What do you know of or about Abraxas, the demi-urge, the serpents as the waves, the mind entangled in the body by a rubber band, of Sophia? What can be said here on this? Does anyone have any light or knowledge in regards to this concept?
Gnosis and Gnosticism.
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Sorry, no.
Hi Art… hope things are going good still?
I am doing ok for now, still work at the cannabis grow in Portland, Oregon but idk for how much longer tbh. What about you, how have you been?
I am just trying to understand more about Abraxas, Gnosticism and what not, I feel I have a great understanding already and displayed my encounter with it in the dimethyltryptamine and psychedelics thread I made a few years ago but there is always more to learn and I like to know others view as well.
Also, how do you all upload pics on here, I tried using Imgur but it’s not good anymore apparently as my picture didn’t show up in the official post a pic thread, thought I’d update my pic.
From the seven sermons to the dead by Carl Jung:
God and devil are distinguished by the qualities fullness and emptiness, generation and destruction. Effectiveness is common to both. Effectiveness joineth them. Effectiveness, therefore, standeth above both; is a god above god, since in its effect it uniteth fullness and emptiness.
This is a god whom ye knew not, for mankind forgot it. We name it by its name Abraxas. It is more indefinite still than god and devil.
That god may be distinguished from it, we name god Helios or Sun. Abraxas is effect. Nothing standeth opposed to it but the ineffective; hence its effective nature freely unfoldeth itself. The ineffective is not, therefore resisteth not. Abraxas standeth above the sun and above the devil. It is improbable probability, unreal reality. Had the pleroma a being, Abraxas would be its manifestation. It is the effective itself, not any particular effect, but effect in general.
It is unreal reality, because it hath no definite effect.
It is also creatura, because it is distinct from the pleroma.
The sun hath a definite effect, and so hath the devil. Wherefore do they appear to us more effective than indefinite Abraxas.
It is force, duration, change.
This is also my understanding of it and I have tried describing it here before. The “many faced god” but also faceless, the infinite but absolute only if it wishes to appear so. It is incomprehensible but a force, it is everything merged with nothing but even above that as well. I read that Carl Jung wrote on Abraxas as well and he was gnostic, this isn’t surprising to me considering I am on that same path and respect Jung’s work greatly.
I feel I have had an encounter with Abraxas before, nothing special but it only gave me advice to heed once before when I sought knowledge, it showed me just how incomprehensible it is, that my mind whilst living would break in attempt at it… I have been reading all day today about Abraxas, Sophia and the demiurge and gnosis. When I heard the whisper from the infinite, it has no face but simultaneously was everything. It’s so difficult to articulate into language since language is a barrier but also magick.
Something I found just a few minutes ago and there is always more.
I was curious if you have encountered it as well, as a whisper? Or perhaps it even took form as something finite temporarily?
The following excerpt from Eugnostos the Blessed is typical:
“The One Who Is is ineffable. From the foundation of the world, no power, no creature, no nature has known the One Who Is. Only the One Who Is knows itself.
The One Who Is is immortal, eternal, without birth,
For whoever is born will die;
Unconceived, without a beginning,
For whoever has a beginning has an end;
Undominated, without a name,
For whoever has a name has been fashioned by another;
Unnamable, with no human form,
For whoever has a human form has been fashioned by another.
The One Who Is has its own appearance,
Not like what we have received and seen,
But an alien appearance that surpasses everything
And is superior to everything in the universe.
It looks everywhere and beholds itself in itself.
The One is infinite,
Incomprehensible,
And constantly imperishable.
The One is unequalled,
Immutably good,
Without fault,
Everlasting,
Blessed,
Unknowable,
Yet it knows itself.
The One is immeasurable,
Untraceable,
Perfect,
Without defect.
The One is blessed,
Imperishably,
And is called the Father of All”
Since there is no duality in the One it can also be symbolized as the Mother of all.
“The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding.”
The Tao Te Ching, chapter 1
That there is a demi-urge seems rather obvious. I mean, look around. Would you design a universe like this?
Yeah but I’m saying if you are doing anthropomorphic theology you cant posit more than one final, all powerful god who pervades causally over everything else. You get caught in an infinite regress of deities if you do. Monotheism was the most logical kind of theology, even though theology is not legitimate philosophy (imo). It was, in other words, the most sensible of the kinds of theology available.
Because of its parsimonious reductionalism, you might say. Simplification of axioms concerning the possible nature of a transcendental thing that is, itself, not determined by the natural laws we know of. This is as far as you can go with a metaphysical question like this. What I mean is, naturalism would never fail to provide, describe and explain a concept of ‘god’ that was monistic in essence… one that involved no philosophical problems like freewill or the ontological separation of god from creation (god transcending space and time).
The progression of stages in the refining of the logic in theology was prolly best categorized by comte and william James to a degree. What I’ve read, at least. Impressive, parsimonious, with all the rigor of the proper skeptometrist.
Karpal Tunnel raises the problem of evil. Gnostic mythology concerned itself with that issue early on. Of course the notion of a demiurge goes back at least to Plato. The question was why the material world does not perfectly embody the archetypal forms. One mythical answer was an imperfect mediating creator. This god is not to be confused with the Ultimate One, the ground of being. In The Seven Sermons to the Dead, Jung’s quasi-Gnostic essay, Abraxas seems to correspond to the former and his Pleroma to the latter. There Abraxas stands above God and the devil who I suppose are locked in a Manichean-like war between good and evil according to Jung’s text.
I cannot say for sure, my first guess is yeah I think I would, not for suffering to exist or out of any type of spite but because it is necessary for growth, maybe things have costs regardless of design or manifestation and so it was put together for the greater benefit, it’s what creates the test in the first place I feel, this demiurge and entire existence, the test is weeding the ascended/ascending from the ignorant, like separating oil from water.
There isn’t any philosophical problem that exists within it really, the issues could arise from the demiurge (duality), it’s why there are the questions there are, where most if not everything contradicts each other or itself and we live in some balance of contradictory essences.
Abraxas transcends this duality and so transcends the demiurge and ignorance. It transcends discussion of it even, making it extremely difficult to understand or know for sure, it is so incomprehensible and outside of this level that it is unknowable in its entirety, perhaps a glimpse every now and then can be shared but ultimately, it can only understand its self and if we are even apart of itself in separate form then the only logical way to understand it would be collectively, a realigning back to it from this state, that’s the staircase to be climbed I feel.
Yeah they’d call that some variation of ‘negative theology’, which basically says… anything you think god is, he ain’t.
Now that’s tight. How can you go wrong wit dat?
Actually, yes.
As a Gnostic Christian, I, like the Jesus I follow, see heaven as right here and right now as this is the best of all possible worlds, given our history. This is irrefutable.
I would not change a thing, other than have more people look at reality and see it the way we do.
Remember please that Gnostic Christians hold no supernatural beliefs and see the perfection in nature.
Regards
DL
As a Gnostic Christian, I know that he is a mythical construct and in no way real.
I find it better to use logos instead of mythos when discussing my religion. Logos always trumps mythos. With it, there can be an end game. Comparing our myths to other Christian myths, to my mind, is a waste of time. There can be no real end game.
Regards
DL
According to Stephan A. Hoeller, author and scholar of Gnosticism and Jungian psychology and Regionary Bishop of Ecclesia Gnostica:
Yeah, we’ve been through this before. You say Gnostics or Gnotic Christians have no supernatural beliefs. I have shown that even some of the people you tend to quote had supernatural beliefs. And of course many Gnostics, then and now, do use the term demiurge and not as a metaphor. And if it is Heaven on earth, why are you so angry - or at least often posting angrily? How would you explain this is Heaven to starving chldren, children right now being abused by their parents and so on?
Isn’t the fact that, as you say, people are not looking at reality causing an incredible amount of suffering not only for them but for others?
You have expressed tremendous anger at monotheists for their sexism and homophobia, presumably because this has caused people incredible pain. If it is all really ok - that is, we are in Heaven - why the anger? If it is not OK, how is it Heaven?
For most people we have to use the word Gnostic to describe people with a number of beliefs. We can’t say ‘Oh, greatest I am said only people who believe X are Gnostics’ so ‘you are not a Gnostic’. We also cannot walk away and report to others that Gnostics believe just what you believe. We have to recognize that there are a variety of beliefs, including ones you and perhaps we disagree with. Tibetan Buddhists with more concrete reincarnation need to accept that there are buddhists who only believe in rebirth, which is not reincarnation, as one of many differences.
Actually, yes.
As a Gnostic Christian, I, like the Jesus I follow, see heaven as right here and right now as this is the best of all possible worlds, given our history. This is irrefutable.
I would not change a thing, other than have more people look at reality and see it the way we do.
Remember please that Gnostic Christians hold no supernatural beliefs and see the perfection in nature.
Regards
DL
[/quote]
Yeah, we’ve been through this before. You say Gnostics or Gnotic Christians have no supernatural beliefs. I have shown that even some of the people you tend to quote had supernatural beliefs. And of course many Gnostics, then and now, do use the term demiurge and not as a metaphor. And if it is Heaven on earth, why are you so angry - or at least often posting angrily? How would you explain this is Heaven to starving chldren, children right now being abused by their parents and so on?
Isn’t the fact that, as you say, people are not looking at reality causing an incredible amount of suffering not only for them but for others?
You have expressed tremendous anger at monotheists for their sexism and homophobia, presumably because this has caused people incredible pain. If it is all really ok - that is, we are in Heaven - why the anger? If it is not OK, how is it Heaven?
For most people we have to use the word Gnostic to describe people with a number of beliefs. We can’t say ‘Oh, greatest I am said only people who believe X are Gnostics’ so ‘you are not a Gnostic’. We also cannot walk away and report to others that Gnostics believe just what you believe. We have to recognize that there are a variety of beliefs, including ones you and perhaps we disagree with. Tibetan Buddhists with more concrete reincarnation need to accept that there are buddhists who only believe in rebirth, which is not reincarnation, as one of many differences.
[/quote]
Yep. There are many different cults, and if you wish to ignore what this cultist tells you of his particular cult, what can I say.
You could look up the word Gnosis, and see that it speaks to real knowledge and nothing from some unknowable supernatural realm.
Regards
DL
And as has been common in the past this is 1) not really a response to what I wrote. Right off the bat I never said anything about ignoring what you wrote. What I did write about is in that post, however tempting it is for me to repeat it here, anyone can look there; 2) simply a repetition of your position. Some people think that repeating what they have already asserted is a response to a post. They are confused.
I looked up the word decades ago when I first ecountered it. The word is used, obviously, by all people who identify as Gnostics and by others. The word is used as part of a wide range of epistemologies and definitely is used to include knowledge of things that some consider supernatural. The word does not, via its definition, demonstrate that some Gnostics are the real ones, and some are not. Nor does it stand for a specific epistemology.
None of this means YOUR epistemology is wrong nor that people should not listen to you. What it does mean is in my previous post.
I believe heaven and hell are in the mind and externalized into the world more so, the world being the potential bearer or shape of what is projected into/onto it. I also believe morality itself is a high sub-conscious/conscious ideal trait/view, there is no non-animate matter of which reacts or destroys other matter with views of morality, since everything is living and merely existing on different conscious levels.