Gnostic Insights

What's with the so-called gnostic connection with magical practices? Cyd examines some of the inconsistencies between magic and Gnosticism and argues that magic is not a virtuous pursuit.

Billy Mumy wishes people into the cornfield in the Twilight Zone episode, "It's a Good Life."

Podcast Support

Please donate to help keep Gnostic Insights up and running...

Yahweh tortures a man named Job in order prove Job's faithfulness to him. Does this sound like the behavior of a loving God? Here we see how the actions of the Old Testament God are actually those of the Demiurge and not the actions of the Father.

You can learn more about the Demiurge here, at our previous Gnostic Insights episode called "The Demiurge's Strings of Power."

the demiurge keeps chaos at bay by forbidding free will in his subjects

Job's wife is not sympathetic to his plight. She's had enough.

Leading with our heart chakra helps us move through the world with love and compassion. Cyd reflects upon this idea and how it can help us interact with others less judgmentally whilst improving our posture!

The Simple Explanation blog talked about aligning chakras back in 2011, if you would like to check it out. Here is my heart chakra aligned with here and now in my toroidal bubble...

Another Simple Explanation blog post offered a fresh idea of "staying centered," which also places the heart chakra at the center of here and now.

This illustration shows the chakras and their prime functions.

"Mr. Natural" from Zap comics leading with his lower chakras...

Podcast Support

Please contribute to keeping Gnostic Insights up and running. Invest in sharing gnosis!

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is an ancient manuscript that presents gnosis from an eastern perspective. In this episode, Cyd shows the parallels between gnosticism and Tibetan Buddhist thought. There is much to discover here that you will find helpful to remembering your gnosis.

Onward and upward! Go to the light!

Wheel of Karma and the Eight-fold Path

"Let the radiant glory of auspiciousness come to illuminate the world; Let this Book be auspicious; Let virtue and goodness be perfected in every way."

Podcast Support

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's episode compares Sethian gnosticism to the Valentinian gnosticism we usually feature. We'll learn some of the basic ways that these two strains of "gnosticism" differ. Who/what is the Barbelo? Who/what is Yaldabaoth? Who/what falls from the Fullness to create our material world? Who and how is a person redeemed to the Fullness?

Cyd turns to a website called "Gnosticism Explained" for crib notes. Click here if you want to visit the site.

Yaldabaoth, son of Sophia

This diagram shows where we stand in the Final Economy

Podcast Support

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!

Today I'd like to share with you my version of a Gnostic Easter message. As you know from previous episodes, Valentinian Gnosticism is a Christian form. That is because we believe that there is a Redeemer, an Anointed One. In English, this is called the Christ. The Christ is a very special fruit of the Father, the Son, and the Fullness of God that has been sent to our dimension to remind and to save us;  to bring us home again.

The good news in Gnosticism is that no one will be condemned in the very end of time; everyone will be redeemed, including the demiurge. So why would we even think about Christ before the end of time? What do you care, if you are resistant to the notion of “being a Christian”? Why would you want to believe in the Christ at all, if you are completely resistant to that notion?

If so, you're really caught in a hard place here if you are interested in Gnosticism and you consider yourself to be a seeker of truth. Because, in my way of thinking, and in the way of thinking presented by the Nag Hammadi, especially the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi, there is no other conclusion to come to other than that we come from the Father and to the Father we will return. We are the fruit of the Pleroma and to the Pleroma we will return. And this physical existence that we are caught in now, this is the fallen world according to Gnosticism. This is not Paradise. And the reason we need the Christ is to help us realize Paradise again.

It's not so that we may be saved, because everyone is going to be saved. It says in the Nag Hammadi that ”everything that was from the beginning” will return to the Pleroma. So that is our eternal souls, our eternal drop of the essence of God. The One Self that I speak of is how I identify it. That will certainly return to the Pleroma because it is of the Pleroma. And all of us, all living creatures, everything that contains life, contains the spirit of God because it is the Holy Spirit that breathes life into otherwise inert mineral existence. So, all forms of life will return to the Pleroma as well. The trees, the flowers, the cats, the dogs, humans, even bacteria. They're all going back.

So, what what's not from the beginning? What will be left behind?

That is the material universe because the material of this 3D universe that we live in, this was not from the beginning. Meaning the material of our universe--the particles in the atoms, the molecules, the elements, the aggregations of minerals, the rocky hard planets--these are the products of the Fall. These are what are called “the deficiency” and “the imitation”.

Then, what is this material? It is an imitation of the Hierarchy of God. It is an imitation of the Fullness of God, the Pleroma. It is not the actual Fullness of God, because that doesn't exist down here in this 3D material universe; the actual Pleroma of God exists above. Onward and upward.

So, when our souls exit this material plane of existence, they rise, and if we are not coming back again, if we are not being reincarnated back into this earth, we will stay up in the Pleroma in the special area that has been built for us Second Order Powers. And that is the place that we call Paradise. That is the place that we remember as Paradise. We all have an inherent remembrance of the Fullness of God, of the Son, of the Father, and of Paradise, because this is where we come from.

The Christ has never fallen. The Christ didn't fall. The Christ was a new fruit that came after the Second Order of Powers. The Christ came down voluntarily in order to save creation and return the entirety back up to the Fullness of God.

And the Christ’s mission doesn't depend upon us. We are not in control of salvation.

Here is the Valentinian version of Gnosticism in review. This episode discusses some of the differences and similarities between Gnosticism and Christianity and suggests that this Gnostic theology is what Jesus of Nazareth actually taught. Who is God? What is the original sin? Who and what is the Christ? Are you and your loved ones going to Heaven? Why is Gnosticism considered such a heresy that modern Christians refuse to listen? Tune in to this episode for the answers...

This diagram shows where we stand in the Final Economy

Podcast Support

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!

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.

Podcast Support

Please consider donating to help keep this podcast on the air.

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.

Podcast Support