Tag: Gnosticism

  • Interpretations of Serpents and Dragons in Theosophy and Ancient Mythology

    Interpretations of Serpents and Dragons in Theosophy and Ancient Mythology

    Part I. ON “Human Serpents” and Immortal Sages: ANCIENT INITIATES CALLED SERPENTS MEANING “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” (Matthew x: xvi) ⊕ “(…) the “Serpent” and “Dragon” were the names given to the “Wise Ones,” the initiated adepts…

  • Blavatsky’s Interpretation of the Tree of Life and Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

    Blavatsky’s Interpretation of the Tree of Life and Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

    “Were it light alone, inactive and absolute, the human mind could not appreciate nor even realise it (…) According to the views of the Gnostics, these two principles are immutable Light and Shadow, Good and Evil being virtually one and having existed through all eternity, as they will ever continue to exist so long as…

  • Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge: ‘Though They Are Gods, Still They Are Not To Be Worshiped’

    Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge: ‘Though They Are Gods, Still They Are Not To Be Worshiped’

    “I say there are many gods, but one God of all these gods, incomprehensible and unknown to all (…) a Power of immeasurable and ineffable Light, whose greatness is held to be incomprehensible, a Tower which the maker of the world does not know.” (Simon Magus, Clemens Recognitiones from the Clementine Literature) “They boast ethereal vigour and…

  • The Manifestation of Divine Light

    The Manifestation of Divine Light

    “But All-Father Mind, being Life and Light, did bring forth Man (Ἄνθρωπον) co-equal to Himself.” (Pœmandres treatise) “This Man or Anthrōpos is the Spiritual Prototype of humanity and of every individual man, and is a technical term found in a number of the early Christianised Gnostic systems” (G.R.S. Mead). “So says the Zoroastrian: I hold…

  • Pico della Mirandola Oration on the Secret of Gnosis and the Dignity of Man

    Pico della Mirandola Oration on the Secret of Gnosis and the Dignity of Man

    Pico della Mirandola on the secret of Gnosis

  • G.I. Gurdjieff on Esoteric Christianity and the Slavery of the Masses

    G.I. Gurdjieff on Esoteric Christianity and the Slavery of the Masses

    Peter D. Ouspensky, a Russian philosopher and student of Armenian mystic, George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff around 1870 recounts a conversation he had with him in his book, In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching (1949). In one account, Peter D. Ouspensky asks Gurdjieff: “Why if ancient knowledge is preserved, why aren’t such men…

  • Did Helena Blavatsky Study with the Druze of Lebanon?

    Did Helena Blavatsky Study with the Druze of Lebanon?

    “The religion of the Druses is said to be a compound of Judaism, Mahomedanism and Christianity, strongly tinged with Gnosticism and the Magian system of Persia. Were people to call things by their right names, sacrificing all self-conceit to truth, they might confess things otherwise. They could say, for instance, that Mahomedanism being a compound…