Gnostic Intermission I

Breaking from the recitation of gospel, it seems fitting to include a bit of opinion, reflection, real or assumed history, and just overall random scription.

Most people of the here and now begin learning about Gnosticism and the alternative scriptures when beginning with lesser-known aspects of history brought up in The Da Vinci Code, as referenced therein to Holy Blood, Holy Grail. I, on the other hand, had happened upon the documentary put together by the British authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail long before the subsequent best-selling novel was on bookshelves; sometime in either 1998 or 1999. In my reading of biblical history, I have realized that non-historians are far better at accumulating fact and drawing logical conclusions from it than seasoned historians who fixate on an outcome and draw their own exaggerated conclusions from minutia rather than objectively indulging all sources.

It also became overtly obvious several general facts which are not commonly known to even most college graduates; granted graduates may be proficient in their fields and Liberal Arts Studies only further consilience in a mind towards which the tendency already leans, it is rather intriguing with all that is known, so much has been outright ignored for so long for reasons of sheer disassociation or desire for prestigious ignorance (here meaning a deluded investment in the presumed predestination of human kind), the latter being horribly ironic (to be explained in a later episode).

Interestingly enough, everything that may have been considered Christian Heresy, or even the equivalent in Jewish terms, has been reiterated by separate traditions inadvertently carrying on those early, heretical traditions while rabidly admonishing them from time to time.

I think the most concise review of the life and times of Jesus can be found in the book on the Cathars under the family reading list. He sticks to accepted history, but never fails to mention distinctions between what church goers and seculars generally know about that time and place and what is deliberated between historians. I would love to paraphrase from the book, but I've sent it on to share the knowledge.

There is work in historical linguistics attributing the terms such as 'angel', where their meanings have followed them through time. An angel is a messenger of God, in its Greek etymology; and thus has been suggested (the author I'm actually looking for, buried in one of my books' bibliographies) that each angel's name is representative of a station within the temple; this is how the "same person" could be living generation after generation, an "immortal" entity acting as a go between from God to man, a holy man who dwells in the temple, one who has ascended to God.

There are a couple of marked exiles and exoduses of the Hebrews. The first is mentioned and analyzed at great length in Holy Blood, Holy Grail: one of the tribes goes against the tribe of David, turning a blind eye to Sodom and Gomorrah (if memory serves). There is known to have been goddess worship among the early Hebrew tribes, be it borrowed or inherent, and the mystical traditions associated with Kabalah would confirm the otherwise overlooked importance of the female aspect (a particular aside here, that the female aspect seems to function covertly in conjunction with the Holy Spirit's habits: always covert, driven to the point of seeming self-evident, but never relinquishing its mysteries...). The goddess worshipers among the Jews may not have been favored (as the favored form of Judaism today no longer indulges it, having disassociated itself with it in most aspects long ago), and Paul and Peter's misogyny remained intact in the development of Roman Catholicism (Catholic means universal, distinguishing itself from the Orthodoxy without removing itself from it).

It is generally accepted by historians that Paul (and subsequently his collaboration with Peter) was the first heretic; his principles, even as he states them in his writings, are him speaking, and rarely ever attributed or associated with the teachings of Jesus. It is generally accepted that Mary Magdalen was among the disciples, and that Peter disapproved.

The Roman church was not that popular for the first five centuries or so... at all, until they swindled a king into their favor, only then to turn and supplant his family later (either by ignoring sedition or provoking it), and here we get the now infamous Merovingians. The Goths, Visigoths and others pouring into the broken boarders of the Roman Empire were not the heathens that most people generally assume. They were Christians... albeit Arian Heretics
"Pertaining to Arius, a presbyter of the church of Alexandria, in the fourth century, or to the doctrines of Arius, who held Christ to be inferior to God the Father in nature and dignity, though the first and noblest of all created beings. " I believe they are also considered to be dualists, though there is a distinction mentioned in the book on Cathars between absolute equality between the Supreme Godhead and the Darkness and the presumed discord in all of physical existence (humans having a good soul and a bad, infectious soul that must be purged).

The most thought provoking fact I'm now indulging in, is the influence of Zoroastrianism on the religious philosophy of the Middle East. Add Hebrew history and names, a bit of Greek terminology and Stoic philosophy, a touch of one man's life and an apocalyptic cultural mood with people on a mission to get their lives back, you've got Christianity. Or so it seems to me, but I'm not a practitioner, so continuities are all too apparent to my pattern-loving mind... to be discussed when sleep has been sated.