As part of the Gnostic psychology that I'm developing along with my brother, Bill, this episode discusses virtues and vices and how they relate to our Aeonic inheritance.

I drew up a chart of vices and virtues for my book, The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated. If you have that book, you can turn to page 26 to see the contrast of vices to virtues. I will also post it along with this episode on the gnosticinsights.com website so you can look it over. I list 34 vices on the left side of the ledger and contrast them with their opposing virtues; this is not a complete list, just a sample. For example, greedy is contrasted with generous; rude is contrasted with respectful; despairing with hopeful; fraudulent with truthful, and so on.

Vices and virtues are dialectical polarities. A dialectical polarity is a line with two opposing poles at either end. For example, night and day are a dialectical polarity and twilight lies in the middle between them. Likewise, hot and cold are dialectical polarities and warm lies between them.

For every virtue that exists from the beginning in the Fullness of God, there is an inverted version of it that arose during the Fall.  The vices are upside-down versions of the virtues. Virtues are pre-existing eternal values that are part of the nature of the Father. Virtues are not defined by humans; nor are they social control measures cooked up by the powers. Virtues are part of our essential, enlightened Selves. Virtues are part of the operating system of the Pleroma. Vices are part of the fallen Ego of the Aeon who Fell, which we identify as the Demiurge. Every virtue has a dialectically opposite vice. You could say that a confused human lies between them.

We humans are only happy and fulfilled when we embody the virtues. We are only happy when we are operating according to our best design. This is our highest human potential. There are people, as few as they may be, that live mostly on the virtuous side of the ledger. When given a choice between selfless or Egoic behavior, these virtuous types choose to honor the Father and their higher Self rather than their own Egos.

People who mock virtue and do not remember the Father and the Fullness would call these virtuous people “goody two-shoes" and brain-washed religious kooks. I have to laugh because someone wrote in recently to call me “incredibly provincial.” Provincial is defined as “unsophisticated or narrow-minded.” Ha! That’s a good one. The implication is that if you are speaking of the Father, the Fullness, or the Christ, you are “unsophisticated and narrow-minded.” When comes the day that the Demiurge’s algorithms want to silence all talk of the pre-existent God Above All Gods, “provincial” will be one of its search terms.

On the other hand, virtuous people think of those who aren’t virtuous as lost souls in need of remembrance and redemption. Virtuous people oppose the Demiurge with love, not vice. We Second Order Powers were not designed to "fight fire with fire." We are led astray when we use the tactics of the Demiurge to try to set things right. The expression "the ends justify the means" is not Aeonic but demiurgic, because it is used to justify vices such as lying, hypocrisy, and the killing of innocents in the supposed pursuit of a virtuous outcome. This isn't the way the Father works. This is the work of the Demiurge.

The vice orientation is continually pushed on us with popular culture as characterized by Hollywood and the licentious Left. I don't think you can lead a life of personal debauchery and vice without it affecting your mind and body. People who appear to have given themselves over to the vice side of the moral ledger pay a price with their physical and mental health.

The Demiurge controls our material universe with strings of power, like a puppet master. There is no free will in the material controlled by the Demiurge. Free will is an attribute of the Father's consciousness flowing down through living creatures from Above. This episode clearly explains the difference between the way the Demiurge controls matter versus how the Fullness of God creates cooperation for the betterment of all.

The Demiurge is the Creator of this material world. But it cannot bring life.

The Demiurge brings order to the initial chaos of the Fall. It causes matter to "level up" using an imitation of the Simple Golden Rule of cooperation, but instead of cooperation it uses brute force.

All living creatures are imbued with life and consciousness from the Top down. Consciousness and hierarchical design flows down from the Fullness of God, and all living pieces of our universe utilize the Simple Golden Rule to hold hands with others of their kind to build the next level up. "The higher the fewer" is the result.

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Here is Part 2 of my conversation with musician, poet, and intellectual provocateur, Tessa Lena. In this part of the interview, Tessa explains the importance of courage and lovingly letting go of the need to control others.

Stay tuned to the end of the episode to hear Cyd's gnostic commentary arising from the discussion.

Visit the Tessa Lena substack page to read her many essays and interviews on today's times.

If you are finding these Gnostic Insights helpful to finding your own gnosis, please contribute to helping the podcast stay on the air.

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This week I had the pleasure of talking with New York musician, intellectual provocateur, poet, and podcaster--Tessa Lena. In this episode, Tessa shares some Russian history with us as well as delivering a large dose of gnosis from her heart. We will finish up the interview in the next episode, so be sure to subscribe to Gnostic Insights, if you haven't already.

Visit Tessa Lena's substack by clicking here.

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Cyd translates the arcane language of the Tripartite Tractate into understandable words to describe the genesis of the archons and their relationship to the Demiurge and this material universe. Who or what are these "beautiful likenesses" that mistake themselves for the Aeons of the Fullness?

"The thought of the archons is not barren--all that they thought about they have as potential offspring: fighters, warriors, troublemakers, apostates, disobedient beings, lovers of power..." (The Tripartite Tractate)

Antifa rioters, 2019

When Logos Fell, his egoic bits and pieces shattered and scattered, becoming the lost little shadows of the deficiency. Logos was horrified at what had happened and at the unruly, disobedient parts of himself that were now loose and rolling around down here below. Logos fled the deficiency and returned to the Fullness, praying for help from the Father and his aeonic brothers to assist with cleaning up the spill.

When Logos returned to the Fullness, his Pleroma was born out of the parts of himself that had become self-aware as a result of the Fall. These parts of Logos, his Pleroma, represented the better part of each and every piece of himself that had broken out and remained below as shadows of the Fall. It is the Fullness of the Pleroma of Logos that forms the body of the Redeemer who comes back down to the deficiency, one piece at a time, to restore love and memory to the Demiurge, helping him remember the gnosis that will return him to the Fullness and bring the eventual end to this deficiency we call materialism.

Logos contains with itself representations of all the other Aeons of the Fullness. That's Logos sitting up there on top of the Fullness.

Logos forgets about his duties as part of the Fullness and makes a unilateral decision to launch himself upward to reunite with the Father. Instead of rejoining the Glory of the Illimitable, Logos Falls.

After the Fall, Logos produced disobedient shadows of himself that became material.

We Second Order Powers are caught here in the material universe, fighting a never-ending war with forces of the deficiency. Logos prayed to the Father while looking at his brothers in the Fullness. This prayer resulted in the ordination of the Third Order of Powers, the Christ. The mission of the Christ is to reenter the material world, one piece at a time, until all of the pieces are redeemed.

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This episode takes a look at one of the slides I will be sharing during my presentation at the Astro Gnosis Conference that will take place in Mexico on March 20. Miguel Conner of Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio invited me to be one of the featured speakers on day one of the conference; thank you, Miguel! If you would like to attend, you can check out the conference page here: Astro Gnosis Conference - Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio (thegodabovegod.com)

Today's talk will explain the following diagram that combines concepts from my books, A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything and The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated. Here's the diagram:

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If you find these podcasts helpful, please consider donating to help Cyd cover the cost. And remember to subscribe to Gnostic Insights so you don’t miss a single episode!

This week we look at two "Gnostic Gospels" known as Tractate 7 ("That the Greatest Human Evil Is Unacquaintance with God") and Poimandres. These tractates are considered "Hermetic" works, unlike the book we usually study which is considered a "Valentinian" tractate. These two tracts, purportedly written by a Greco-Egyptian god known as Hermes Trismegistus, support the concepts we have been studying, particularly as it relates to "acquaintance," their word for gnosis. Here we find that the ancient Egyptians were also believers in the Father and the Fullness Above as the singular source of Truth and the gnosis that comes through pure intellect.

The Fullness of God is a hierarchy consisting of all facets of the Son's names, places, and powers that prefigures our material universe. This "entirety" is the fount of acquaintance with God.

"People, where are you rushing, so intoxicated and having so fully drunk the strong wine of reasoning unaccompanied by acquaintance? You cannot hold it; already you are about to throw it up. Stop, get sober! Look up with the eyes of the mind--and if you cannot all do so, at least those of you who can! For the imperfection that comes from unacquaintance [lack of gnosis] is flooding the entire earth, corrupting the soul along with the body that encloses it and preventing it from putting in at the havens of safety." Tractate 7

"Why, O inhabitants of earth, have you given yourselves up to death, even though you have the ability to share in immortality? Repent, O you who have traveled with error and participated in lack of acquaintance! Depart from the darksome light, share in immortality, give up corruption!" Poimandres

This episode explains the gnostic belief in universal salvation of all living creatures--considered one of the great heresies of Gnosticism. As if that weren't enough heresy for one episode, we also explain the nature of God and the difference between the God of the Hebrew's Old Testament and the God Above All Gods of the Gnostic scriptures. When Jesus referred to "my father in Heaven," who was He referring to?

The Fullness of God is a hierarchical arrangement of Aeons. The final Aeon added to the top of the Fullness was named Logos, and Logos carried within itself small fractals of all the other Aeons.

The final Aeon mistakes himself for the Fullness.

The final Aeon tries to reunite with the Father on his own, but Falls out of the Fullness instead and breaks apart. The best part of Logos retreats back to the ethereal Fullness. The part that is left behind in the material plane is called the Demiurge.

Cyd sits down with a new friend who has just read The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated for the first time. She is obviously far along in her gnostic journey and her questions and observations are right on point. We sat at the kitchen table and shared gnosis for a couple of hours. Here is the second half hour of our conversation.

This is a wide-ranging conversation that touches on an amazing array of gnosis.

The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated is a very simple presentation of classic, Valentinian gnosis. Non-scholastic; illustrations by cyd.

The hierarchy of the Pleroma is shaped like a pyramid. The higher, the fewer.

The hierarchy of our bodies is patterned after the hierarchy of the Pleroma. This diagram is from A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything.

Cyd's Simple Explanation theory of everything is fully consistent with the gnostic gospel, written prior to the author's reading of the Nag Hammadi codices. Whereas the Gnostic Gospel Illuminated is written in religious terminology, the Simple Explanation is written with secular language for those who reject religion and prefer to discuss consciousness, toruses, and fractals.

Our material universe may be shaped like a torus. This is explained in A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything.

Cyd's rainbow slinky torus with a smaller slinky nested inside. This is the sculpture discussed during this episode.

Cyd's chalk drawings of toroidal dynamics are among the earliest torus images to be found on google. You may see all of the chalk drawings at the simple explanation blog. https://asimpleexplanation.blogspot.com/2010/02/drawings-of-toroidal-forces-universal.html

The Simple Golden Rule: Units of consciousness reach out to their neighbors to share information, assistance, and love, with their focus on the project in the middle, to build the next level up. This leveling up can only be accomplished with Golden Rule cooperation, building something together for the betterment of all.

The Simple Golden Rule is patterned after the cooperative spirit of the Aeons of the Pleroma. It is how everything in our universe builds better.

Lack of cooperation arises from selfish egoism and can only destroy but never build. Destruction is a material, entropic activity, whereas building for the betterment of all is a selfless, Aeonic activity based on love.