Blog Continues Here...

Human Rights Commissions Debate in the Globe and Mail

For updates to this blog, and for an archive of greatest hits, update your bookmarks to jordanstratford.blogspot.com/

NT Wright Hates St. Ratford, Heaven

Arch-Anti-Gnostic But Really Smart Bishop NT Wright (who took a public swing at me in US News & World Report last year, as you'll recall) declares a jihad against Catholic schoolchildren, Governatrix Maria Kennedy Shriver Schwarzenegger and HEAVEN ITSELF.

We don't go to heaven, we chill in our graves after death 'til Jesus shows up and makes us all ZOMBIES. So why do we tell Timmy that Fluffy is heaven with Jesus? Because Jesus lied to that guy that time...

Wright: There is Luke 23, where Jesus says to the good thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in Paradise." But in Luke, we know first of all that Christ himself will not be resurrected for three days, so "paradise" cannot be a resurrection.

So Jesus was JUST KIDDING about the whole Heaven thing. Anyway, the upside to getting rid of Heaven (I wonder what the listing price is and if this has something to do with the subprime mortgage crisis?) is that it proves the Leftbehindists are wrong wrong wrong.

TIME: That's very different from, say, the vision put out in the Left Behind books.

Wright: Yes. If there's going to be an Armageddon, and we'll all be in heaven already or raptured up just in time, it really doesn't matter if you have acid rain or greenhouse gases prior to that. Or, for that matter, whether you bombed civilians in Iraq. All that really matters is saving souls for that disembodied heaven.

I love this article so much I think I may have peed my pants.

Dianne Sylvan Gets It Right

Dianne over at Dancing Down the Moon has an excellent list:

Here are the things I don't care about:

I don't care what the name of your religion is.
I don't care what the names of your gods are.
I don't care how old your religion is.
I don't care if your great-great-whatever grandmother passed down your famtrad Book of Shadows under the watchful eye of the Inquisition.
I don't care if an entire civilization worshipped your Goddess for ten thousand years.
I don't care if you made Her up based on manga or Tolkien or a dream you had...

What do I care about?

I care that your religion has made you a kinder, more compassionate person.
I care that you can hold down a job.
I care that you're growing past whatever happened to you as a child or last year.
I care that your gods help you become stronger without coddling you.
I care that you are willing and able to adapt and change as your life does.
I care that you care about the Earth.
I care that you care about someone and something outside yourself...

Go read the whole thing

Wiccans Need Not Apply To Judge Toronto Beauty Contest

So a Wiccan who also practices reiki (gasp!) and reads tarot (horrors!) wins beauty contest A and is invited to judge beauty contest B. And then is uninvited...

"We just got her bio a week ago and we don't agree with it," said Karen Murray, Miss Toronto Tourism pageant director. "We want someone down to earth, not someone into the dark side or the occult."

"We need a judge who has an upright reputation and we would be proud to introduce to the audience."

"Our board of directors has eliminated her as a judge as tarot card reading and reiki are the occult and is not acceptable by God, Jews, Muslims or Christians. Tarot card reading is witchcraft and is used by witches, spiritists and mediums to consult the dark world."

I wonder how many Jews and Muslims they consulted on this issue.

Source

Blog Moving Soon...

So this blog shall disappear shortly, to be replaced elsewhere by a more "column" style format and an archive of the "Top 40" highest-ranked and most-commented articles from the last three and a half years. Stay tuned for the new URL.

I think it's fair to say that blogging has been very good to me.

The Magdalene Prayerbook

... has turned into a total re-write. I am currently looking at a bucket of random paragraphs. Oh, editorial narrative arc, why have you forsaken me?

Care about the environment? Eat less meat

Last week, Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the United Nation's Nobel Prize-winning scientific panel on climate change, asked the world to "please eat less meat." Speaking at a press conference in Paris, he said meat was a very carbon-intensive commodity, a fact established by UN research showing that livestock production creates more greenhouse gases than all forms of transport combined. [...]

It's interesting to note that he followed his statement by saying: "This is something that the IPCC was afraid to say earlier, but now we have said it."[...]

Then there are the dreaded V-words: vegetarian and vegan. Few politicians or environmentalists want to face the jokes, media backlash and libertarian "consumer freedom" zealots who will accuse them of forcing Canadians to eat only salad and lentils. The same sort of people who fought against mandatory seatbelts and restrictions on tobacco would shift their public relations and spin machines into high gear.[...]

Global demand for meat is projected to double between 2001 and 2050, meaning billions more animals will be raised in intensive, inhumane conditions.[...]

Encouraging the public to cut back on meat would also have major health benefits. The World Cancer Research Fund recently urged consumers to limit consumption of red meat to 500 grams per week and to avoid processed meats completely. (Vegetarians and vegans figured out the health advantages of a meatless diet long ago. That's why they have lower rates of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, colon cancer, hypertension and other diseases.)

Cutting down or cutting out meat is a win-win-win policy. Not only does it help the fight against global warming, but it saves countless animals from factory-farm suffering and it's good for you.

It's just too bad so many people are afraid to talk about it.

– The Globe and Mail

How long before the spin on this story is blamed on;

• The Gay Agenda
  
• Islamofascists
  
• Zionists
  
• "liberals"
  
• Al Gore
  
• Xenu

?

Twenty Two Songs for Mary Magdalene

In the beginning
we are together Achamoth

First
the word poured out on this barrenness

Second
in the flourishing of infinite love, consecrated

Third
and now wisdom, restored and enthroned

Fourth
and husband, anointed from alabaster

Fifth
brought deeper

Sixth
heiros gamos; Logos, Sophia

Seventh
for The Merkabah

Eighth
the weight of silver coins

Ninth
the hidden riches of secret places

Tenth
is the roar of their machines

Eleventh
for yearning

Twelfth
for a hanging man

Thirteenth
in the place of skulls

Fourteenth
we catch the blood in the cup

Fifteenth
and beg for the body

Sixteenth
stones torn at death's own failure

Seventeenth
a star in the heavens, where perhaps stars should stay

Eighteenth
but the moon knows no blood

Nineteenth
for the invincible sun

Twentieth
for the raising of the veil

Twenty-first
to the Pleroma, the Fullness

Harry Potter Teaches Gnosticism, Vatican Continues Whining. Also, The Golden Compass.

But the deeper problem, he said, is that the books advocate gnosticism, the idea that a select elite can develop special powers and gifts through specialized knowledge that is hidden from most mortals -- or "muggles," as normal humans are called in Rowling's books...

The future pope praised Kuby's attempt to "enlighten people about Harry Potter" and the possible "subtle seductions" that can distort children's thinking before they mature in the Christian faith.


– Catholic News Service

They're still going on about this. And yet somehow every time a Vatican half-wit claims that Harry Potter, with its themes of loyalty, self-sacrifice, commitment, friendship, and the triumph of love over death = Gnosticism, I want to kiss these guys on the lips. Plus, they call us a select elite, which is tremendously silly, but I'll take what I can get.

In other childrens-lit-that-annoys-the-brocaded-elderly news, I went to see The Golden Compass on the weekend and thought it was fabulous. Again, the story is about courage, loyalty, commitment, and pluck-in-the-face-of-totalitarianism. The film is VERY careful to not make the Magisterium look like the Church (in fact they're more wizardly, even occult). If Catholicism as a whole (and I don't believe it is, mind you) is pointing at the screen saying "These evil guys are cutting off the souls of children and want to control the universe with ignorance! That's exactly us!!" and getting their vestments in a bunch, then so be it.

So I have to ask, Mr. Dumb Vatican Secretary To Whom They Always Pass The Microphone, do you really think that rank and file Catholics are this totalitarian cliché that you seem to want to present them as? Okay, granted, for most of its history Catholicism has been a totalitarian cliché, but that's only because the Empire collapsed and there was a job opening. If Paganism or Judaism or Gnosticism took over the Absolute Power Corrupting™ job, I doubt we would have done any better. Regardless, during the last century the RCC has proved it can use its powers for good instead of (okay, as well as) eeeevilll, and you, Mr. Dumb Vatican Secretary To Whom They Always Pass The Microphone, are making the people who house the poor and feed the hungry look bad, which I'm pretty sure is not your job.

[Personal note to "JoJo": Call me for another PR pep-talk, my usual rates apply]

Update:

Best His Dark Materials Review yet.

Gnostic Mass: January 20th 3 PM

The Regina Coeli (Queen of Heaven) Parish of the Apostolic Johannite Church in Victoria, British Columbia will be performing the AJC Sophianic Eucharist at the Church of Truth, 111 Superior Street in James Bay. All are welcome.

Number Six!

Living Gnosticism is number six on Amazon under "Gnosticism", ahead of Pagels and Williams.

UPDATE: Moved up to number five as of 10:30 this morning.

Priests clash at Church of Nativity

BETHLEHEM — Robed Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests attacked each other with brooms and stones inside the Church of the Nativity on Thursday as long-standing rivalries erupted in violence during holiday cleaning.

...But the cleanup turned ugly after some of the Orthodox faithful stepped inside the Armenian church's section, touching off a scuffle between about 50 Greek Orthodox and 30 Armenians.

Palestinian police, armed with batons and shields, quickly formed a human cordon to separate the two sides so the cleaning could continue. Four people, some with blood running from their faces, were slightly injured.


The Associated Press

Christians, man, what are you gonna do? Haven't these guys discovered pointless flame wars on the Internet like the rest of us?

Archbishop of Wales' Anti-Fundamentalist Christmas Message

One of the great problems our world faces is the growth of fundamentalism. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as “a religious movement based on strict adherence to certain tenets held to be non negotiable”. And the words non negotiable say it all – because fundamentalists believe so strongly in the truth of their convictions that they assume they are right and any contrary opinion is wrong.

A new phenomenon has arisen in our country however, what can be called atheistic fundamentalism. It advocates that religion in general and Christianity in particular have no substance and assumes that most people will accept their premise that faith has no value and is superstitious nonsense.

To have a coherent and rational debate about the tenets of the Christianity is perfectly natural. To have a virulent, almost irrational attack upon it claiming that what is being said is self evidently true is dangerous, not just because it refuses to allow any contrary viewpoint but also because it affects the public perception of religion. It leads, for example, to local authorities calling Christmas ‘Winterval’, to hospitals removing all Christian symbols from hospital chapels, or to schools refusing to put on nativity plays, or allowing children to send Christmas cards with a Christian message, or airlines refusing staff the freedom to wear a cross round their necks.

All of this is what I would call the new ‘fundamentalism’ of our age and any kind of fundamentalism, be it Biblical, atheistic or Islamic, is dangerous, because it allows no room for disagreement, for doubt, for debate, for discussion. It leads to the language of expulsion and exclusivity, of extremism and polarisation, and the claim that because God is on our side, He is not on yours.

Solstice: Gloria In Profundis

Little light shining,
Little light will guide them to me.
My face is all lit up,
My face is all lit up.

– Kate Bush, And Dream of Sheep

Christmas Present Spoiler: You're Getting a Chicken

Or maybe a goat, if you're good. Or a radio. Or a bucket. Or a water filter.

We're giving our family and friends proxy gifts this year: we're donating to Oxfam, who will in turn buy a vet-checked chicken and a year's feed to a family in a developing nation. It's a great thing for kids, because they can name the chicken and look up the country on a globe and learn about how important their chicken will be to the family who's looking after it for the child. A great opportunity to tell them what Christmas is really for, and how incredibly easy it is to change the world.

And corporate gifts? Who needs yet another whatever? Tell your clients they got a $58 goat named after them in Chad, and the milk will keep 4 children healthy while saving their eyesight. Or a $20 water bucket that keeps mosquitos out, or $22 worth of water filtration to provide potable water for an entire village?

How about $39 worth of tools? Or a $105 bike that will create a small business and connect villages? Or a $15 radio that can act as a virtual school, promote democracy AND coordinate emergency planning?

Oxfam Unwrapped

A View From The Cheap Seats of the Anglican Train Wreck

As some of you may know, The Episcopal Church in the United States has been weathering tremendous pressure over its openness and acceptance of gays and lesbians to Holy Orders, just as it did decades ago with its decision to accept women to the same roles. A few weeks ago, most of the clergy and laity of a conservative diocese in California – let's call them the Joaquinites – decided to schism away from the Episcopal Church. (A diocese can't leave, as it's a jurisdiction; a chunk of territory. TEC will replace the bishop and clergy and keep going with its fine work in the area, actually taking care of people).

The bishop and folks of the breakaway group have aligned themselves with the ultra-conservative fundamentalist "Southern Cone" region of the Anglican Communion, which is breaking all the rules by operating outside of its territory. In the meantime the openly homophobic and misogynist Archbishop of Nigeria has set up a kind of parallel-universe-Anglican-Church on American soil.

[While I'm aware both of these unkind epithets are overused, the Archbishop in question advocates for imprisonment of those who even openly *support* gay rights, let alone those who seek them for themselves. Same guy who whipped a Christian mob into rioting against Muslim families, killing 70. So yes, the Archbigot wins the overused epithets. He's a freakin' monster. Deal.]

Here's the thing. The Episcopal Church is the only legitimate branch of the Anglican Communion in the United States. The only one. So the new AmeriNigerian bishops, while certainly valid bishops, cannot be understood as Anglicans anymore. Ditto for the breakaway Joaquinites. After all, Anglicanism was founded on the basic principle of praying next to people who disagree with you – and these guys certainly aren't doing that anymore, despite the invitations by the progressive/liberal/inclusives to keep praying together. And unlike several fringe groups (cough, goes the Indie Cath priest) who allow bishops "in general", the Anglicans have always had "landed" or territorial bishops. The breakaways aren't doing that anymore either.

In comes the ref, by which I mean the way-too-late UberArchBishop of Canterbury. He blows the whistle and says, yes, The Episcopal Church is the only legitimate branch of the Anglican Communion in the United States. He's throwing a party later and everybody's invited, but the crankies (and the Nigerians and their friends) aren't going to come if there are any legitimate American Anglicans there. They plan on throwing their OWN party later on, and guess who's not invited? High school much? Oh, and the UberArchBishop also said, and quite rightly, that the crankies weren't legitimate, which really made them 31 flavours of hissy fit. Like, totally, OMG!

I would go even further, and question whether or not these guys, who clutch their KJVs (so what if the translation is pants? It has the best poetry) mightily to their righteous chests, are even Christian anymore. I can do that, because I'm not one. Relax, kiddies, this is an outsider perspective, remember? It does seem to me that the "historic faith" has, as I've blogged before, has three columns; scripture, tradition, and reason. Certainly, they have scripture. They're thumping the bible in ways that would do a baptist proud. I mean, their women aren't keeping silent in church, which makes the baby Jesus cry, but they're sure as hell working on that one (Women's Ordination is next on the chopping block for the Joaquinites). But they reject the tradition of their own communion utterly with this whole non-local bishops thing, and certainly any sense of reason has long flown out the stained glass window with these guys. So all they have left of their Christianity is their soteriology (salvation-mechanism) and a kind of literalist bible thumping that had zero to do with Christianity for its first millennium-and-a-half-and-then-some. Anglicans have always bent over backwards to be "catholic" in the broader sense: these new guys seem, by comparison, roadside snake-handlers.

Their response is of course that the Anglicans in America aren't really Anglicans; Anglicans in Canada are no longer Anglicans, and hey, even the Anglicans in the UK aren't Anglicans anymore (because the UberArchBishop won't let them throw their tantrum unhindered).

Right, well. Setting all that aside, what I really want to say to the new folks who find themselves in self-exile, is, Welcome. You've found what is the ecclesiastical equivalent of the Island of Misfit Toys. Take a seat. Not that one, it's John's. The first thing you're going to need to do is pick up a copy of The Many Paths of the Independent Sacramental Movement, because that's what we call our little island, and you're pretty much marooned here. This is the land of bishops who aren't bishops of anywhere in particular, Catholic bishops who worship ancient Roman gods, Anglican priests who are also druids, GLBT clergy, and even the odd Gnostic priest who is also a Witch who worships Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom. Go figure.

Down the hall is the Star Chamber of the SSPX - they ran away from home because their dad didn't hate Jews enough for their liking, just as you ran away from home because your mum didn't hate gays. Buy them lunch, you should get along like a house on fire.

Authority and Dust

"If there is a God, and he is as the Christians describe him, then he deserves to be put down and rebelled against."

This is from Philip Pullman, author of the very-very-Gnostic-and-not-even-vaguely-atheistic His Dark Materials trilogy, the first volume of which has been made into a children's film. Haven't seen the film, will, loved the books. Pullman is being called an atheist about every minute and a half by the slack-jawed inbred yokels who insist that their Santa-Claus-cum-demiurge version of the Infinite Divine is a person, and one to be both feared and worshipped. Well, he's not. I also utterly reject this Sunday-School-cartoon-character as having anything to do with God. Does this make me an atheist?

I don't believe in God, I Know.

When Pullman kills off the Authority in his books, he's doing us all a favour. Rather than the mad Archon against whom the characters rebel, Pullman sides with the Dust, a barely detectable essence of permeating Divinity; a concept of God far more subtle, demanding more reflection, than pray-n-obey. I can see why the Zeus-worshippers don't care too much for Dust: They want their God throned, bearded and lightning-bolt chucking.

The Magisterium is a metaphor for absolute power corrupting absolutely; to equate that with the Roman Catholic Church is to assert that Rome is exactly that corrupt power – an assertion I reject. I don't deny that the RCC has been this in the past, but certainly not in my lifetime. Get over it.

HDM eschews the cookie-cutter formula for youth fiction, in which only a virgin can break the curse, only the innocent can see the magic. CS Lewis would rather kill off the innocent in a train wreck to keep them innocent forever, rather than have them become mature, sexual, thinking grown-ups. We are to pity the survivor who has to face the adult world and envy the mangled corpses who remain in blissful ignorance for eternity.

Pullman paints a universe in which the children must grow up to become powerful: they must learn and make difficult choices and noble sacrifices. Their courage comes not from blind trust that Aslan* will save them, but rather from an increasing sense of their own maturing integrity. Pullman prizes individuation over innocence, and I can certain see how a culture obsessed with prolonging childhood into one's thirties would react with squeamishness at such an idea.

>*[Don't get me wrong, I love Aslan as a neo-Mithraic archetype and I think he's handled very well by Lewis. It's just that bravery comes easy to a literary character knowing that when they leap off the building, Superman will save them. It's a cheap courage.]

"The Secret" and "Zeitgeist": Revolting, Irresponsible and Exploitive

Shame on the producers, promoters and, yes, even the supporters of "The Secret" and "Zeitgeist". These are the Gospels of Powerlessness cloaked in a language of power.

The Secret: You create your own reality, so you should use it to get a red sports car* or a better job or more money. If you get hit by a bus, it's because you secretly (ha!) wanted it to. (*This criticism from a guy who owns so many red sports cars he just gave one away for free, true story).

Zeitgeist: All of society is a con controlled by the elite; you can't stop them, but at least you can fear and hate them.

People hunger for a liberating message, and are prepared to cast lauds upon the bearers of that message. So with that message comes a real responsibility which "The Secret" and "Zeitgeist" abdicate: no no, we're just here to be clever. Or specifically in the case of "The Secret", we're just here for the merchandising.

What's the takeaway of the Secret? Callousness. If a 4 year old starves to death in Darfur, if a teenager grows up in America without health care or ever learning to read, it's because they "created their own reality". If you have cancer, you deserve it, because somehow you thought you deserved it and were too stupid to realize you didn't actually deserve it, but now you deserve it because you chose it which proves you're stupid.

So much for foreign aid or third world debt relief or Red Cross donations. All those earthquake and tsunami victims "created their own reality", and The Secret says I can save my VISA dollars to buy a new tiny dog for my handbag. How does this not make you a jerk, exactly?

Now I'm not discounting for a moment the power of visualization, the fact of synchronicity, and the tendency of objects in systems to attract like objects in like systems (mangled as "the law of attraction", which it is not) – I'm among other things a Witch and I wholeheartedly subscribe to magic – but you don't create reality; reality creates reality. What you can create are opportunities within that reality, but even then you still need tools with which to leverage these opportunities. Tools like literacy, education, democracy, health, justice, and access to capital. If you want to see change in your (or anyone else's) experience of reality, you have to invest in these tools. It's that simple. Be the change you wish to see in the world, but don't be a materialistic red-sports-car-coveting creep that "The Secret" turns everybody into.

[By the way, the Whitman quotes are forgeries, the "science" isn't even *close* to science, and did Shakespeare really know The Secret? He died impoverished, alone, and unheralded. Nice Secret.]

What's the takeaway of Zeitgeist? Smugness, knowing that the bad guys, "international bankers" (in a time-tested nod to anti-Semitism) run the world and want to implant you with technology, creating a one-world-government. Anyone who thinks this is anything other than a YouTube version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an idiot.

The number of factual errors in the film is staggering, as is the assault on logic throughout. I don't think there's a date in the first half hour that isn't off by centuries. Were there countless pre-Christian templates for the Jesus myth? Absolutely. Did these expressions continue after the Christian era, such as the portrayal of Christ as Apollo and Orpheus? Indisputably. But there are enough real facts to support this that the producers didn't have to go making things up – which is exactly what they did. I have no doubt that anyone with a passing interest in Classics or Egyptology or early Christian history cringed mightily throughout the sloppy and downright stupid first act of the film. (Remember, this is coming from lil ole heretical me, here.)

The "911" chapter of the movie is likewise brimming with factual errors and wild supposition, callously exploiting the victims of that tragedy for brief internet notoriety. The Federal Reserve chapter is such patent nonsense that anybody with access to Google can see what a steaming pile it is. I'm hardly a fan of George Bush, but did he really quote Hitler? Um. No, no he didn't. Is the Fed a private bank unaccountable to a democratically elected Congress? Do I really have to spell that out? For a film that says "the others" are lying to you all the time, this movie is somehow trying to outdo "them" in its ambitious fabrication. I believe the term is "bullshit". The producers think you're stupid enough to swallow it. Are you? Are you really? This vile, lying, nasty little film – Jackass with a real body count – is supposed to make you afraid, make you angry, and make you blame "the elite".

(This is somehow contrasted by a feel-good globalism that says we should all get along. But I guess that "get along" doesn't mean open borders or trade or treaties or travel, because that's the ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT "they" want you to accept. I guess we'll all get along by sulking in our parents' basements and Googling "black helicopter" stories, but, y'know, globally.)

Here's the news flash: If you're reading this, you ARE the elite. If you can read, have access to clean water and a fridge, have ever been immunized, can legally vote, and have possessions totaling in value of a thousand dollars you are one of the richest, most powerful people on the planet and no kvetching about student loans or credit card debt or minimum wage jobs is going to change that profound and basic fact.

Well, now that you're elite what are you going to do about running the world? What are Americans going to do about the Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security and the restoration of constitutional democracy, or their declining literacy rate coupled with a soaring infant mortality rate? What are Canadians doing about the appalling conditions on the Rez, or about a Prime Minister who willfully sabotaged Commonwealth carbon talks? What are you, my dear elite world-ruling reader, going to do about climate change, about access to capital for the developing world, about AIDS and malaria and hepatitis and sweatshops and "suicide seeds" and genital mutilation?

Learn. Organize. Act. Vote. Donate. Educate.

Noblesse oblige. You're in charge, nobody else. So suck it up, put down the pablum of these repulsive and exploitive films, and get to work.

Sincerely,

A university-educated upper-middle-class media-literate white male.

Gospel of Judas controversy

Over on the Palm Tree Garden we've been chatting with Dr. April DeConick of Rice University about her new book, The Thirteenth Apostle. She's been terribly long-suffering and gracious about our non-academic questions.

She's just put an opinion piece in the New York Times about, among other things, the ghastly mishandling of the Gospel of Judas text by the National Geographic Society and the release of an inaccurate and misleading translation to the public.

Readers might remember I took an intensive on both The Gospel of Mary and The Gospel of Judas with Dr. Bruce Chilton last year as part of my DMin. studies, and we walked carefully through the (now admittedly flawed and corrected) NGS translation in its public-release form. So I'm not altogether unfamiliar with the content.

Now I have been trying to get hold of a copy of Dr. DeConick's book, with little success thus far. But in the meantime I do have her comments from her excellent blog, the PTG thread, and the NYT piece. Please understand I do not question her scholarship, but I do question the fact that some of the things I'm hearing don't make any sense. For instance:

While National Geographic’s translation supported the provocative interpretation of Judas as a hero, a more careful reading makes clear that Judas is not only no hero, he is a demon.
Several of the translation choices made by the society’s scholars fall well outside the commonly accepted practices in the field. For example, in one instance the National Geographic transcription refers to Judas as a “daimon,” which the society’s experts have translated as “spirit.” Actually, the universally accepted word for “spirit” is “pneuma ” — in Gnostic literature “daimon” is always taken to mean “demon.”

Now my good friend and Coptic scholar Jesse has confirmed that, during the period of authorship of this text, daimon did in fact equal demon. The problem that remains is this: that in both previous and later eras, the word "daimon" does mean "spirit"; or perhaps a closer translation would be "intelligence" or "spiritual entity" with neither explicitly positive or negative association. This is how everybody from Socrates to Jung has used the word; everyone except, apparently, the authors of second century Christian and related documents. Like I said, I haven't read the book, but this just doesn't "feel" right, although I acknowledge it as "accepted".

Next problem:

So what does the Gospel of Judas really say? It says that Judas is a specific demon called the “Thirteenth.” In certain Gnostic traditions, this is the given name of the king of demons — an entity known as Ialdabaoth who lives in the 13th realm above the earth. Judas is his human alter ego, his undercover agent in the world. These Gnostics equated Ialdabaoth with the Hebrew Yahweh, whom they saw as a jealous and wrathful deity and an opponent of the supreme God whom Jesus came to earth to reveal.

There are a LOT of contradictory (and clearly personal to the authors) cosmologies in Gnostic literature. Where is the evidence to support that the authors of Judas were familiar with one in which Ialdabaoth was "the thirteenth"?

Because Judas is a demon working for Ialdabaoth, the author believed, when Judas sacrifices Jesus he does so to the demons, not to the supreme God. This mocks mainstream Christians’ belief in the atoning value of Jesus’ death and in the effectiveness of the Eucharist.

While it would, in this assumed scenario, compromise "the atoning value of Jesus' death", how could this in any way diminish the effectiveness of the Eucharist? This simply doesn't follow.

And finally,

Judas is a frightening character. For Christians, he is the one who had it all and yet betrayed God to his death for a few coins. For Jews, he is the man whose story was used by Christians to persecute them for centuries. Although we should continue to work toward a reconciliation of this ancient schism, manufacturing a hero Judas is not the answer.

We have to touch on the fact that there's at least one other document from that era called "The Gospel of Judas" which seems to be unrelated to the one we have, aside from the title. Setting that aside, when I first heard of the "appointed Judas" version, it rang true with me. In fact it always has.

Either Judas was part of the plan all along and integral to Jesus' salvific death and resurrection (which proves that Jesus knew what he was doing) OR Judas was the bad guy, Jesus never saw it coming and the salvific death of Jesus was pretty much an accident. Christianity is going to have to make up its mind.

Why did Christianity vilify Judas, and yet make Pilate a folk hero cum lay-saint for centuries? Without Pilate, so the reasoning goes, there would be no Crucifixion. Well, likewise for Judas.

I look forward to finally getting my mitts on a copy of Dr. DeConick's book and perhaps having some of my questions addressed.

Living Gnosticism Now Available on Amazon.com

Just click on the cover!

ONE Campaign Succeeds in Liberia Debt Relief

Yesterday, Masood Ahmed, Director of the IMF's External Relations, posted an open letter on the IMF's website announcing that they finally took the step necessary to move forward. Some key excerpts:

I am pleased to inform you that on November 12, 2007, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has secured adequate pledges from member countries for the cost of the IMF's debt relief to Liberia

ONE used it's two-and-a-half-million-strong membership to pressure the International Monetary Fund to provide debt relief to Libera, enabling that country's government to actually spend money on its citizens for the first time in 14 years. That means roads, schools, hospitals, sanitation, agriculture and policing. That means hope. That means life.

Extraordinary.

Revised, Expanded, Retitled

About a year ago I handed a copy of my first book to Dr. Bruce Chilton (author of Mary Magdalene: A Biography), who graciously scribbled all over it and handed it back to me with a look that can only be described as cheerful sympathy. Now, it was a "trade" book, and something of a rant, truth be told, and never meant to be scholarly. That being said, his insight was of course extremely valuable.

One of the most common comments I received about the book (aside from the sensationalist title) was "I loved it, I didn't understand it." Also for a great number of people, the book was difficult to buy. But I was and am encouraged that many connected with it and use it in the manner I'd hoped; as a compass to navigate the shifting waters of a deep and sparkling myth.

So, it's really the same book, better organized, about 2 words a page of edits, with a few new bits and a new title. A tune-up in a new edition rather than a rewrite. And it will be available in bookstores and amazon early in the new year.

In all things I am scattered

In all things I am scattered, and from wherever you wish you collect me.

– Gospel of Eve

Religious sect fears extinction in Iraq

He points to scars on his face and shoulders.
"They said, 'You are an infidel, and this is an Islamic state. Either you pay the jiziyah (a tax that Islamic governments once levied on non-Muslims) or it is hallal (religiously sanctioned) to kill you.' "

The kidnappers demanded that the goldsmith pay a $100,000 ransom.

"If you do not give us this, how would you like to be killed -- by shooting or beheading?" they asked him. "We will send your head back to your family in a bag."

Jabar, 42, belongs to the Mandaeans, a tiny religious sect that survived for 2,000 years in Iraq and Iran. Now scattered by Iraq's bloodshed, its leaders fear the sect will disappear.

Not Jews, Christians or Muslims, Mandaeans venerate John the Baptist in rituals revolving around water. Their religious leaders still speak a dialect of Aramaic that is closest to that of the Babylonian Talmud.

"They are one of a variety of groups that appeared around the same time as Christianity ... offering alternative interpretations -- in the case of the Mandaeans, one that scholars have identified as Gnostic," explains Nathaniel Deutsch, a Mandaean expert at Swarthmore College. "The Mandaeans are the one community ... that still survives from this period, and that is extraordinary."


– Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Wrap Cover Final

And that's that, off to John at Apocryphile Press in Berkeley. All going well, it should be available at your local bookstore shortly and on Amazon by Christmas. I'm starting to line up dates in January/February for Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, and the San Francisco area. I'll keep you posted.

Back of the Book Blurb

Twenty two centuries ago in Alexandria, a sect of philosopher-poets fashioned a myth the strands of which weave through Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Greek philosophy, and inspire the legends of the Holy Grail. Long banished to the realm of notorious heresy, the myths of the Gnostics ("knowers") took root in the fertile imagination of the nineteenth century's artistic movements and esoteric circles, bearing fruit in the daily spiritual practice of thousands today. In 1945, a library of Gnostic writings surfaced from the Egyptian desert, allowing the movement – after 1500 years of propaganda and slander – to speak with its own voice. Rich in imagery, nostalgic in tone, Gnosticism quietly restores Wisdom to her place as a Goddess in Western religion, reveres Eve as the first saint, and acknowledges Mary Magdalene as foremost of the Apostles.

From the music of Tori Amos and David Bowie to CG Jung and The Matrix, Gnosticism's themes and deep questions resonate in contemporary culture. This book is about and for modern Gnostics; examining and illustrating their integral world-view flowing from ancient and once-forbidden scripture.

"Combining insight and scholarship with unequivocal clarity, this in-depth yet concise book should be the first read by anyone seriously interested in the subject... Stratford's work rises as a force and luminary in the horizon of modern Gnosticism."
– Bishop +Rosamonde Miller

The guts of the thing are off to the press, I just need 2 hours of childcare to finish the cover. Flintstones Chewable Valium™ anyone?

At Midnight...

... I was drinking absinthe in a Bollywood-themed oyster bar surrounded by drop-dead gorgeous women, talking theology and poetry and playing "Barrel of Monkeys".

I love my life, I really do.

Spring 2006: A Phone Call From An Old Associate

INT. NIGHT: Spring 2006. THE MONSIGNOR's bedroom. Camera pans across a sleeping MONSIGNOR, in the room's dim light we see a mobile PHONE on the nightstand. The PHONE rings, lighting up.

THE MONSIGNOR (answering phone, rubbing eyes): Mmm? Hello?

On the other end is THE SECRETARY, male, mid 30s, Italian accent.

SECRETARY: Bon giorno, Signore. Please wait while I connect you...

THE MONSIGNOR: Um, yeah, okay.

A new VOICE, this one an older male with a German accent

VOICE: Good morning.

THE MONSIGNOR: Well, well, well. Look who's come crawling back.

VOICE: Don't kid around, I'm serious. We have a problem.

THE MONSIGNOR: What is it this time? Another Jesus mummy? DNA samples cropping up in dead French monarchs?

VOICE: Worse. Well, not worse. Annoying.

THE MONSIGNOR: Lay it on me.

VOICE: Dan Brown.

THE MONSIGNOR: You're kidding me. You haven't dispatched the albinos?

VOICE: Our budget is not what it once was. You of all people should know that. I need some advice.

THE MONSIGNOR: What, him, personally?

VOICE: No no, it's the Templar thing. So much attention, so much interest. We have to stop it.

THE MONSIGNOR: But there's nothing there to stop. Everybody loves an underdog. There'll be a movie or two, then the whole thing will blow over once the merchandising revenues tap out. You know that.

VOICE: Yes, yes. It's just a mosquito in the hotel suite with these guys. Reporters calling asking for a tour of the basement, that sort of thing.

THE MONSIGNOR: Say no.

VOICE: I tried that. I need something else, something definitive.

THE MONSIGNOR: I see. But I'm not exactly on your team, Jojo. What's in it for me?

VOICE: Your usual payment, I suspect.

THE MONSIGNOR: (pausing, savoring). Yes. Yes I think we have a deal.

VOICE: What to do? How to make the Templars go avay?

THE MONSIGNOR: It's going to get worse, you know. Next year is the 700th anniversary of the arrest.

VOICE: You think I don't know that? This is why I call you now. There could be marches, people all over the vorld dressing up in armour with red crosses demanding revenge. It's a nightmare. These Templars are poster-boys for sympathetic heretics!

THE MONSIGNOR: Okay, well.... embrace and smother. Why don't you pardon them? Tell everybody they were never heretics to begin with, they were good loyal Catholics and the whole thing was a huge misunderstanding. Blame the French.

VOICE: Bah! Clement the fifth did that already, right after the executions!

THE MONSIGNOR: Jojo. Baby. You think I didn't know that? But what are the odds that Vatican-beat reporters are gonna look that up?

VOICE: (pause) I see.

THE MONSIGNOR: I hope so.

VOICE: The Joan of Arc play?

THE MONSIGNOR: The Joan of Arc play.

VOICE: So you're saying we do a public apology for persecuting innocent, faithful Catholics, maybe a requiem Mass somewhere...

THE MONSIGNOR: Now you're thinking, Joey baby. If you can't thrust, parry. Deflect the whole thing.

VOICE: Yesss.... yessss... perhaps a beatification or two... for the holy martys of the faith. "No heretics here!"

THE MONSIGNOR: That's what I love about you, man. One shove in the right direction and you fly with it. Just make it a pre-emptive strike. I'll arrange a leak that you're doing some digging, and a month before the anniversary you announce you'll pardon them all is if it was news, as if you'd never HEARD of ole Clem five.

VOICE: This is perfect. Danke. Thank you so much.

THE MONSIGNOR: And now there's just the matter of my payment...

VOICE: (clears throat, pauses) Your kung-fu is the greatest.

THE MONSIGNOR: I'm sorry? What was that? I didn't catch that.

VOICE: Okay! Your kung-fu is the greatest! I said it.

THE MONSIGNOR: Aw, sweet, sweet music. Anything else?

VOICE: Ve are done here.

click

THE MONSIGNOR: (chuckling) Anytime, Jojo. Anytime.

FIN

Getting the book out the door

... always takes longer than you expect. I try to fool this by expecting a very short period of time, thus even if that time is doubled it's still reasonable. But of course the universe is on to me.

So, light posting.

Now, if anybody has something for the Ask a Gnostic Priest I can probably do that pretty quickly.

Anyone?

Buehler?

Save The Gnostics - New York Times

THE United States didn’t set out to eradicate the Mandeans, one of the oldest, smallest and least understood of the many minorities in Iraq. This extinction in the making has simply been another unfortunate and entirely unintended consequence of our invasion of Iraq — though that will be of little comfort to the Mandeans, whose 2,000-year-old culture is in grave danger of disappearing from the face of the earth.

The Mandeans are the only surviving Gnostics from antiquity, cousins of the people who produced the Nag Hammadi writings like the Gospel of Thomas, a work that sheds invaluable light on the many ways in which Jesus was perceived in the early Christian period. The Mandeans have their own language (Mandaic, a form of Aramaic close to the dialect of the Babylonian Talmud), an impressive body of literature, and a treasury of cultural and religious traditions amassed over two millennia of living in the southern marshes of present-day Iraq and Iran.

Practitioners of a religion at least as old as Christianity, the Mandeans have witnessed the rise of Islam; the Mongol invasion; the arrival of Europeans, who mistakenly identified them as “Christians of St. John,” because of their veneration of John the Baptist; and, most recently, the oppressive regime of Saddam Hussein, who drained the marshes after the first gulf war, an ecological catastrophe equivalent to destroying the Everglades. They have withstood everything — until now.


– Nathaniel Deutsch, New York Times

The Gospel According to St. George

New Rule: Just because your tattoo has Chinese characters in it
doesn't make you Spiritual. It's right above the crack of your ass.
And it translates to 'beef with broccoli.' The last time you did
anything spiritual, you were praying to God you weren't pregnant.
You're not spiritual. You're just high.

– George Carlin

A few things about the book.

So now the book is "out in the wild" for blurbs, and after that it goes off for line-edits and final proofreading, spellchecking all the typos I made in the last round of edits. I can often do a first draft typo-free, but I always bugger it up with the edits. Ironic.

A few things about the book.

It's quite a short book, about 100 pages. There's not a lot of detail, and there's quite a bit of repetition. Why? Because I didn't write this book for Gnostics so much as I wrote it for Gnostics' moms. It's a very general introduction that takes a quick tour around the borders of "what's going on here" and attempts to answer a few basic questions. What is Gnosticism? What is gnosis? Where does this come from? Do you believe in God? Are you Christian? Don't you guys hate the world? Why is Gnosticism in the newspaper all the time? Stuff like that.

It has no footnotes, and no index. I don't go into a lot of expository detail, so you're not going to learn much about all the dead people. There are lots and lots of really good books about dead Gnostics, and almost nothing about live Gnostics. This is a book about live Gnostics. Footnotes could easily make the book twice as long, and all the footnotes would be citations of who said what to what reporter in what publication in what year, or worse: which academic said what about which dead Gnostic in what book. Now, I happen to care about that sort of thing, but I bet the person you're handing this book to won't.

The book used to have a pretty large glossary and a chronology. But really, does your mom care about the difference between Bardesanes and Basilides? I took out about 40 pages of extra stuff like that. The book still introduces you to ideas such as the Pleroma and Aeons and Emanations, and uses a lot of simple metaphors. There's quite a bit about the what of things and not too much about the why. I wrote this to be "the first book" for those interested, but certainly not "the last book". It's not comprehensive by any means, but it's designed to whet your curiosity.

So the book is chatty and light, stressing poetry and praxis over rationale and dates and theology. Perhaps the next book will be about deeper and tougher questions about the Gnostic take on the nature of reality and good and evil and fate and free will and reincarnation and , but this initial book is a starting point. I wanted to make something extremely accessible.

News: Caitlín Matthews wrote a blurb!

In this book, Gnosticism steps clear of the theological tangles that have been woven about it to reveal a way of spiritual liberation. Jordan Stratford traces Gnosticism's wise thread from source to its essential place in daily life. 
 

- Caitliín Matthews, author of Sophia:Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of God.

Well, yes, she's awfully clever and that's exactly what I wrote the book to do.

Stay tuned.

Living Gnosticism - Cover Art Preview

Autumn Conclave Photos

Vesting before Mass




Rev. Stu and Rev. Lance prostrate during Dioconal Ordination



Rev. Mr. Shawn Johnston takes vows of the Order of Ste. Esclarmonde



The new Deacons offer Communion



Msgr. Jordan, Bishop Shaun, Father Scott, Deacon Lance, Deacon Stu, Brother Shawn

Many thanks to all who attended and made this gathering such a joyous success, and congratulations to our new deacons and brother!

A new force in popular culture

Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun

Davies believed this Christian sect, which rose up soon after the death of Jesus, was suppressed because church fathers didn't like their claim that Jesus taught the route to God was through individual insight, a goal associated with Buddhist and Hindu enlightenment.

I'll soon get to whether Gnosticism (pronounced naw-sti-sism), which rejects belief in Jesus' resurrection as the way to salvation, is a spiritual worldview people today might seriously want to adopt.

But there is no doubt Gnostic ideas have become a force in popular culture, especially through movies such as The Da Vinci Code and The Matrix series, as well as Blade Runner and Minority Report (both based on science fiction novels by Philip K. Dick.) Gnosticism also shaped the influential psychologist Carl Jung, the poetry of William Blake, the Theosophy of Helen Blavatsky and the Jewish mystical tradition known as Kaballah, which the singer Madonna has recently embraced.

Gnosticism is in vogue in part because of the waning power in the West of the once-mighty Christian church. Sometimes the backlash against the church has a knee-jerk quality to it, but it is nevertheless luring more people to feel suspicious about whether church authorities are telling the complete story about the origins of Christianity.

Here's how Davies puts his thoughts about Gnosticism in my book, Brave Souls: "The church worked on the theory that salvation is free; as long as you believed, you were saved. But the Gnostics thought you had to have some brains. The Gnostics taught that salvation, or enlightenment, could only be achieved through an inner journey."

Davies, despite being an active Anglican, maintained the early church fathers also couldn't stomach Gnosticism's heterodox emphasis on Sophia, the Greek word for wisdom, which represents a feminine aspect of the divine.


– Read the whole thing

Gnostic Facebook Thingy

Did you know that if you go to someone's facebook profile, mine for instance, and click on the word "Gnostic' in the religion field of the profile, you get a listing of all the people in your area network who have listed Gnostic as their religion?

Also facebook has a healthy and growing "Gnosticism" group. Just saying.

Conclave of the Apostolic Johannite Church for the Feast of Sophia: Thursday, September 6, 2007 to Sunday, September 9, 2007

Queen of Heaven Gnostic Church (Regina Coeli Parish AJC) is delighted to host this autumn's Conclave of the Apostolic Johannite Church in Victoria, British Columbia. Events are to be held at the Church of Truth, 111 Superior Street in James Bay.



All events open to the public unless otherwise noted

Schedule:

Thursday evening:
Clergy dinner, limited space available, please let me know if you'd like to attend.

Friday:

9:00 Blessing and Contemplative Prayer

10: 00 Opening Mass

12:00 Lunch

13:00 Workshop - The Kabala of the Letters with Avielah Barclay

15:00 Mass Workshop (closed)

Friday evening: Dinner out (Location TBA)

Saturday:

10:00 Diaconal Ordination Mass

12:00 Lunch

13:00 Apostolic Council Meeting (closed)

15:00 Presentation and Discussion, St. Raphael the Archangel Theological Seminary

16:00 Presentation: Introduction to Gnosticism by Jordan Stratford

17:00 Evening Mass: Descent of the Holy Sophia

19:00 Dinner out

Sunday

10:00 Brunch out (Chinatown)

Publish or Perish vs. Publish and Perish

If the CEO of Doubleday or Random House writes a book, is she self-published?

I was on a panel a few years ago debating this issue - I was hired to work with a small publisher whose titles were excluded by the local publishing industry awards because they weren't considered a "publisher" but rather "an organization that helps authors self-publish" – a distinction that doesn't seem to make sense to anybody. Anyway, the industry association decided that, in the above scenario, an author who happens to own or run a publishing company is not, in fact, self-published. The whole discussion struck me as a tad fallacious, if not goofy.

Now, I personally own a small publishing company and have published about a dozen works for other authors over the years. It's been a side-of-the-desk revenue stream, which tends to take a back-seat to other projects, but it brings in enough that it's worthwhile continuing. I've missed some great opportunities because other projects have demanded priority, but I've made some interesting things happen regardless. I have the same resources that much larger publishers have: in-house book design, an ISBN database, a network of printers and shippers (I've used Lulu as a US online-processor and drop-shipper along with different players in the UK and Canada), access to Amazon and Books In Print, barcoding, professional PR strategies, etc.

I decided to publish my first book myself because it had a very limited audience, I doubted I'd crack a thousand copies and most 3rd party publishers will royalty an author less than a dollar a copy. If I'm wearing both hats (author and publisher) I keep both royalties and am not at the mercy of another publisher's slate.

Now, enter the new book.

I've talked with three established publisher's you've no doubt heard of and have their titles on your shelf somewhere. They've all been very supportive and want to see the thing. Of course, none of them will give me an advance or anything, but neither will I if I publish the thing myself.

I have this idea that a different publisher gives the book some credibility – but how much of this is illusory? I mean, most people will buy the book on Amazon and a smaller number will buy it in certain stores. I don't think they're going to say "Oh, this was published by House X, that must mean it's been vetted by professionals and that really matters when I decide to read a book or not." So I'm likely being a little goofy myself here.

Odds are I'll just publish the thing myself, use a local printer for bookstore orders that come in via BIP, and use a third-party fulfillment/drop-ship house for online orders that come in via the website and Amazon.

Or does the third-party cred in fact matter? Thoughts?

Preface to My New Book, Living Gnosticism

Most modern bookstores will offer a dozen or so works on the Gnostics and their Gospels. Each of these texts will leave you with the understanding that Gnosticism is something odd that happened 1800 years ago or so, and that the Gnostics now belong to the realm of historical curiosity rather than religious experience. You are unlikely to encounter the living, challenging tradition that is playing out in the lives of thousands who will meet this weekend for prayer, celebration, debate and community action.

You'll read elsewhere that Gnosticism is elitist, misogynist, secretive, and world-hating. But the Gnostic scriptures themselves speak of a philosophy that is universal; reveres Eve as the first Saint and Wisdom as a Goddess; is intimate rather than occult; and finds Holy Wisdom under ever stone and within every tree. You'll hear that Gnosticism is dualist, claiming two equal and opposing gods; but Gnosticism has always taught that we are all aspects of an infinite one-ness.

Most baffling of all, contemporary readers will be told that the word "Gnosticism" is so vague and contradictory that it never really existed – despite a rich continuum of seekers, history, and scripture. Part of the challenge in studying Gnosticism is that it has never been a monolith, never had a canon of orthodoxy. It has always been less of a "set" and more of an intersection of overlapping themes. The themes themselves have an elusive, dreamlike quality that presents many challenges for scholars used to tidy classifications.

Most of the confusion arises from identifying Gnosticism with much later, distinct movements: Marcionism and Manichaeanism. While each of these borrowed from earlier Gnostic ideas, they veered vastly from Gnosticism's original course – denying gnosis, the intimate understanding of Divinity that is the core of Gnostic experience – and therefore cannot be credibly regarded as part of Gnosticism at all. The distinctions are as sharp as Buddhism from Hinduism; as Christianity from Judaism. Worldly denial, radical dualism, and disregard for the Old Testament can be found in later movements, but nowhere in Gnosticism per se.

Compare all these contradictions with the abiding reality of Gnosticism; an inclusive, participatory religious context that invites, inspires and nourishes. At the very center of Gnosticism is the enlightened moment of gnosis; an immediate, intimate and unique encounter with the Mystery and our place in it. Many schools of religious teaching in the West have rejected this transformative experience, due in part to the fact that it demolishes both Original SIn and the authority of scripture, setting in thier place the Sacred Flame of our kinship with the eternal. Yet Gnosticism has never been extinguished, surviving in the shadows of orthodoxy, flowering throughout the centuries as myth and mysticism. Gnosticism prizes art over polemic, intuition over theology, curiosity over obedience.

Seeing this contemporary phenomenon, it's easy to categorize Gnosticism as "just another religion", with a core of religious texts, churches, clergy, rites for certain days of the year – and in a very real sense that's true. But Gnosticism is also a way of seeing; a technique for working with a set of tools that begin with a specific myth, but does not end there. Gnosticism is ultimately pragmatic, adapting to the spiritual experience and imaginative daring of each explorer. While this book illustrates a picture of contemporary "organized" Gnosticism, most Gnostics are solitary confreres, contemplating and creating in coffee shops and living rooms. While Gnosticism can express itself via a tradition of incense and candles and sacraments, it is equally expressed in art galleries, in charity, in social action – and in discrete moments of liberating clarity.

What I Did On My Summer Holiday Away From The Blog

Sorry 'bout the dust. We'll be back in shape shortly.

I finished the new book. I brushed up on my Latin. I caught up on my reading. I revised the liturgy. I renovated the office. I planned for conclave next month. I prepared for my doctoral dissertation declaration next month. Plus work and family stuff.

So, as my Google ranking slips lower due to the neglect, I hereby banish the downward trend by invoking the magic words gnosis, Gnosticism, Sophia, Sophianic, Abraxas, Valentinians, Sethians, and hot nude naked college girls gone somewhat inappropriate.

There, that should do it.

Bruce Chilton Reviews Pagel's, King's Reading Judas

To make its case against seeking martyrdom, "Judas" relied on a widespread theology, best known in the Epistle to the Hebrews from the Christian Bible. According to the innovative argument of the Epistle, when Jesus died on the cross, he was the perfect sacrifice that accomplished every sacrificial requirement, and therefore obviated all further offering. In "Judas," that means that Jesus sets aside every form of sacrifice — the ritual of the temple in Jerusalem, the pagan slaughter of animals, as well as Christian martyrdom. That is the reason why Judas helps Jesus to sacrifice himself in this fascinating Gospel.


– Dr. Bruce Chilton

Statement of the Apostolic Johannite Church in response to the Anglican Church of Canada’s General Synod Resolution on Same-Sex Blessings.

It is with profound sadness that I read the news of the defeat of the resolution to allow an individual diocese to allow for same-sex blessings within its individual parishes. Laity and Clergy alike had approved the resolution but it was narrowly defeated by the House of Bishops by a vote of 21 to 19.

Nevertheless, given that the resolution had passed both the laity and clergy previously, it is not without a measure of hope and optimism that this resolution will, in time, be passed.

The Apostolic Johannite Church continues to affirm and uphold the Ninth Principle in the Statement of Principles that the Sacred Flame is present in each human being, and thus its offices, and by natural extension, its Sacraments are open to all regardless of race, gender, status or orientation.

We likewise continue to affirm and uphold the sacramental understanding of matrimony, which is created by the couple themselves though the signifying of their commitment, as the principle matter and form, with intent being demonstrated by the same. The role of both clergy and civil authority alike is to act only as official witness on behalf of the community.

In conclusion, we continue to affirm, uphold, and welcome all those so called to a vocation of union and all those in the midst of discerning the same.

Given in Calgary, on the Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, at the Oratory of St. John the Beloved


– His Eminence Bishop Shaun McCann

Midsummer, and Hiatus

A blessed Midsummer, all.

Last Friday, I was in a minor car accident with my wife and small children. While the car has been repaired, we're still all a bit unsettled by things and Z is suffering some injury (whiplash). As I've had quite the run of health concerns of my own, I find myself stretched thin and as a result I'll not be able to commit to regular services over the Summer months. I'll be taking the time that I do have to finish my book, begin mapping out my doctoral dissertation, catch up on parish paperwork (such as our provincial incorporation that has been ready to go for a full year) and planning for Conclave.

I am always available for private communion, confession, hospital visits, and other pastoral care functions. Just no Mass for July and August. September brings Conclave, and all are welcome to join us in Victoria over the 7th, 8th and 9th for liturgy, acceptance of monastic vows and a few ordinations (!!!) : this promises to be the largest international gathering of Gnostics in quite some time, and I hope you can join us.

Many blessings on this day of the pinnacle of the sun.

Praxis: End Genocide. Right. Now.

Learn

I've been reading about Africa, an hour or so a day, for the last few weeks. It's a lot like being dropped into the middle of the Lord of the Rings: Gondor? Rohan? Mordor? What the hell are you talking about?

Trodding on, I've discovered a few things, and have committed to action regarding the genocide in Darfur.

The media images of Africa are invariably ghastly: Black Hawk Down, Ethiopian famine, harbours of terrorism, environmental devastation: but the situation is not hopeless. Africa is experiencing a renaissance of democracy and is tackling core issues of health, accountability, education, and human and civil rights. Many of the civil wars that have plagued the continent since the end of colonialism and during the Cold War have ended, and recently.

Despite it's many problems such as desertification and the AIDS pandemic, Africa is healthier, better educated, more democratic and more peaceful than it was ten years ago. There's more farmland, too. Like I said, not hopeless.

Let's learn about Sudan:

• Sudan is the largest country in Africa, with a population of around 39 million
  
  
• The country is dominated by an northern-based Arab-supremacist minority which has waged genocidal war on the black African population. A north-south civil war ended due solely to international pressures, but an east-west civil war in the western region, Darfur, rages on. This is not a war between Muslims and non-Muslims, but a one-way slaughter of Arabs against non-Arabs.
  
  
• The government pays and arms Arab militias (the Janjaweed) to massacre civilians, burn villages, poison wells, attack unarmed refugee camps, and rape women systematically.
  
  
• The Darfur genocide has killed 400,000, with 3.5 million refugees fleeing the conflict.
  
  
• African Union troops patrol the refugee camps but can only observe and do not fire on marauding forces.
  
  
• International pressure has worked on the Sudanese government before, it will work again.

ENOUGH Project Against Genocide

Save Darfur





Give

• There are six thousand of you. Six thousand people read this blog every month. Think about that. Now look around you, at your wallet or your coat or the back of your couch. Think you can find a dollar? If each of you donates that one, single dollar to this the world's greatest current humanitarian crisis, we can keep 100 families alive for one full year. That's clean water, rice cereal, tarp shelters, and vitamins.
  
  
• We recently hosted a small wine and cheese party and raised $500 for Amnesty International. Just educate yourself, communicate what you're doing to your invitees, and put out a bowl for cheques. It's that easy.

Act

Even accomplishing the miraculous (and relatively effortless) task of sustaining 400 people for a year, at the end of that year those refugees will be unprotected and unable to return to their villages until the root cause of the massacre is addressed. The war criminals must be held responsible and punished under international law; the Sudanese government's corrupt control of southern oil fields (the source of their wealth and munitions) must end; corporations and nations (particularly China) must divest to dismantle the infrastructure of genocide.

• A Canadian oil company, Talisman Energy, not only invested in Sudan but is accused of aiding the government in the massacres committed during the north-south civil war. When citizen groups demanded Talisman divest from their Sudan holdings, they folded faster than Superman on laundry day. Pressure works.
  
  
• The numbers on the next Canadian election are identical to the last Canadian election; too close to call, meaning a riding-by-riding, seat-by-seat battle for a minority government. That means every piece on the board matters and everybody is hungry for your vote. There has never been a better time to get a commitment out of a sitting MP on this issue...
  
  
• ...such as this gentleman, The Right Honourable Peter MacKay, Minister of Foreign Affairs. He can be contacted by this form here.
  
  What he needs to hear is this: Given that Canada has generously supported both humanitarian aid and the AU mission in Darfur, our commitment is certainly honourable. However, food and medical aid to refugees does nothing to end the cause of the suffering: the Sudanese government's use of genocidal tactics against a civilian population on purely racist grounds. What is Canada willing to do to protect the population militarily, punish the war criminals and support a lasting peace? And thank him nicely for his support of the International Criminal Court (the US does not) which is identifying the war criminals and gathering evidence. But, okay, aside from food aid and ICC support, what else you got?
  
  We're listening. We're taking notes. We're calling your riding association with the results. Oh, and local media wants to hear about your response, too.
  
  
• Americans have really lead the way on this issue, reaching across party divides to form coalitions of action and intent. But only US citizens can demand that the pressure for the Sudanese government be maintained, and to turn up the heat. Before 9/11, Sudan was a critical part of Al Qaeda and harboured Osama bin Laden, his network, and his money. One dirty look from the United States later, the Sudanese booted out the terrorists and handed the money over to the FBI. Pressure works.

The Darfur crisis has been described as "Rwanda in slow motion" - a decade ago 800,000 people were butchered in just 100 days. Many politicians since have stated that they would have acted and supported intervention if they had been educated and if their constituents cared enough to write letters. 100 letters per representative could have saved tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives. But they didn't, because nobody wrote them. And a genocide was allowed to just... happen.

Never again.

Sophianic Religion: Starting from Zero

Setting aside that I'm a Gnostic: would I believe what I believe if I didn't already believe it?

There were, for me, always dragons at the bottom of the garden. I acknowledged, intuitively, that there were kinds of non-ordinary experiences accessible via imagination and play, and that the line between "real" and "imaginary" events was not always a precise distinction. Just as "real" things could have "imaginary" (mythic/psychological) consequences, so too could imaginary experiences impact and manifest in the "real". This is generally frowned upon as "magical thinking"; a derogatory term which collapses two ways:

• "The Secret"-style "wishing makes it so" vapid (and invariably greedy) projection-ism, or
  
• discounted altogether resulting in reductionist nihilism

So the balancing act is to reject both kinds of materialism: magic as a means to an end, and magic as a random chemical event in the brain with no meaning or value. I was always drawn to and liberated by myth. But this path of magical thinking means walking in the verdant strip between two deserts, between flake-ism and radical materialism. It's holding the Mystery. This is not an easy thing to do.

Even just accepting that there IS a Mystery, an "event cloud of non-local phenomena", or x-factor or God, is rather terribly unpopular at the moment. This is more of an issue for those who believe there is a Mystery than those who have experienced that Mystery, but still, it puts one on the spot.

Now if you're born into that Mystery, it's suspect - just as being born into any set of beliefs or perception is suspect. If you convert to Mormonism, it probably means you've asked some deep questions and have found something that resonates with you. If you're born Mormon and still are one, it's unlikely you've done any real thinking for yourself. The exception is walking away from say the Catholic Church, embracing atheism or Satanism or Scientology for a while, and returning to the local Parish upon realizing you may have chucked out the baby with the bathwater.

So what made me "convert" to Gnosticism, and what would I be if there was no "Gnosticism" for me to convert to?

This isn't an easy question, as Gnosticism can't be considered the same as any storefront church. Nobody (well, almost nobody) gets to walk past the local Gnostic bookstore or Gnostic Chapel and say "gee, I wonder what goes on in there?" and get handed a pamphlet. The Gnostic Road is profoundly dissimilar from that of a person who attends an Eastern Orthodox service out of curiosity and really likes all the singing. You have to be hungry to go poking about for Sophia.

And that's just it, isn't it? Her, rather. Even without ever hearing the word Gnosticism, I knew in my bones that the Mystery could be understood as both feminine, and as Wisdom. We live in a world defined by data, and is taking baby steps toward information, but the great flower of all this is and must ultimately be Wisdom. That's what I want.

Her.

So far, no churches, no websites, no mailing lists. Just me, the Mystery, and the icon of Sophia. But where to find Her? Glimpses of Her everywhere, but She is the most apparent in Quiet. In forest. All the tent-revivals and Hallefuckingluiahs in the world just make Her step out until you've calmed down a bit. The observant will note She has a Romantic streak: Pre-Raphaelites and Grail romances and groves and small stone chapels. Shhh. Yes, She can be seen among the jeans and tee shirts, but our Girl does tend to go for the velvets. She's the Otherness, and likes to take a step sideways from the mundane. You have to court Her, follow where She goes. That's part of the paradox (and She's rather fond of those as well); She's everywhere, but She tends to bestow Her gifts in some places and not others.

And if my studies and understanding and gnosis stopped there, that would be enough. To see that shimmer out of the corner of your eye, that glimpse into Faerie that is Her throne – to be a Knight of the Lost Queen. That's enough for me.

And yet there's a further blessing, to not be alone in this. To cross the deep water, you step into a boat – and that's what the church is. That's the "nod", the knowing camaraderie, the in-joke of circus freaks chanting "one of us!". And when I see these siblings-in-arms, I want to celebrate them. Champion them. Take care of them, if I can. This Gnostic stuff is difficult – there's not a "faith" option, a "pray 'n obey" option. It's challenging and trying and alienating and bloody miserable some of the time, truth be told. And my vocation, my calling, is to see if I can't make it a little bit easier for these people. And I fail at this all the time, but I keep going.

There is another thread to this: Not just a community of now but of then; a lineage and succession (you then you then you then you then you...) of others who've known, and serving and honouring that is also fodder for ridicule, for charges of elitism and exclusivity and power-over. Just for recognizing and loving something. Even though my Apostolic Succession does not flow from the "apostles" but from John the Baptist, an archetypal figure who is also Oannes and Dagon and "the mind in the waters". All these old stories, half-remembered poems, kept and broken promises. If I hadn't known this, if I didn't wear a collar and have crosses oiled in palms as per the ancient tradition, I would still be a part of this.

If it all falls away – and it may still – into a sci-fi-con of space reptiles and magic mushrooms and New Agers and Merovingian bloodline-ism, I will still be here. Knowing what know. Loving what I love.

Her. And the Mystery.

Jeremy Knocks One Out Of The Park

Q: Say, I object to your use of the patriarchal word “God” and/or your Christian Gnostic background. Christianity is a terrible, bloodthirsty, awful religion and/or Jesus never existed and/or he made babies with Mary Magdalene and/or he was actually a pagan deity.

A: Oh, grow the hell up.

Thanksohsomuch. From here.

Question Everything

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Lanterns Among the Dark Trees

No my friend, darkness is not everywhere, for here and there I find faces illuminated from within; paper lanterns among the dark trees.


-Carole Borges

No Services For June 10th

... as I have family and childcare issues. Sorry 'bout that.

Contraception, Population, Abortion, Labour Shortage, Immigration, Urban Planning, Sustainability and Multiculturalism

Which seems like a lot to cover in one post. Perhaps I'm over-reaching just a titch. ;-)

Here goes:

- I live in a country with a high education rate, free and universal health care, easy access to contraception and a generally pro-feminist social environment. Reproduction is accepted as "between a woman and her doctor" by practically everybody, and those who say otherwise have a tough time getting elected.

- Because of the almost universal and hassle-free access to contraception, most women can and do choose to "wait until the right time" to have a baby. I suspect some of the issue is a society which perversely looks down on women who raise children when they're biologically optimized to do so, while pressuring women to finish school and establish careers first and put off childbearing until an age with some increased concerns, if not indefinitely.

- This has lead to a record low pregnancy rate in Canada; and despite our relatively small number of abortions (compared to the US), about one out of every five pregnancies in the country last year was terminated.

- I was speaking with a friend from high school, and we came up with a list of about 20 women we'd graduated with. Of those, only 6 had children, and only one had more than one child (2). These women are all in their 40s now, and unlikely to start popping sprogs. Statistically, my generation has contracepted itself out of the gene pool altogether. Poof. Gone.

- In my town of 400,000 people, we currently have 4000 job postings and 1100 unemployed people. While the minimum wage is posted at $8 an hour, average starting wage for service industry (paper hat) jobs tend to offer around $11 an hour. With new malls and big box stores away from the downtown core offering $16 an hour, they're still not getting applicants.

- An aging population, combined with a trend of early retirement (55) leads to both increased pressures on the public medical system as well as the diminishing tax base to support such a system. Clearly, we need more taxpayers. Let's go find some.

- Ask any Vancouverite where the new Canadians are coming from and they'll tell you India and China. They'd be wrong. Number one is the US, then Mexico, France, the UK, Australia, Philippines, Jamaica, Japan and Germany. Problem is, these people are not coming in sufficient numbers to replace our dead Canadians and non-existent babies. We need more immigrants. Millions more.

- If the Republicans keep the White House next year, we'll continue to get a steady stream of Americans. But if the Democrats win the election, the tide will slow and we might even see large numbers of Americans return to the US. [Canada's Globe and Mail yesterday projected that the Canadian dollar will achieve parity with the US dollar by the end of the year. So if our money is worth the same as your money, and we have one tenth the population and buying power... let's just say our dollar is not worth the same because we're doing anything particularly clever – we're just not borrowing 3 billion dollars a day from the Chinese to keep our economy afloat to pay for tax breaks to the richest 5% of the citizenry]. Regardless, we're going to need more people.

- People? Isn't the world overpopulated? Of course not. There is enough food, land, and fresh water for at least double the world's current population... if we put people in cities, which are more efficient and sustainable than rural regions. Let's put it this way: over the next decade the population of Seattle will increase by a million people, and aside from taller buildings and a few hundred more Starbuckses, you really won't notice anything. Compare that to putting a million people in eastern Washington - Hanford, or Spokane. It would be devastating and permanently change the character of the region. This isn't just a "first world" thing; apply the same thinking to rural India vs. Mumbai. Cities are good, countryside should be left the hell alone. People in cities live longer, healthier, smarter, and with a smaller carbon footprint than their country cousins.

- Okay, let's say we convince places that have too many people to send them to us. Ideally, we want educated, English and French speakers with skills in critical shortage areas: nursing, law, financial admin, and people with lots of investment capital. Really, these are the people everybody wants to keep, but I'm pretty sure we can make them a better offer.

- When these people arrive, they won't know anybody, so they'll tend to cluster into neighbourhoods defined increasingly by the origins of their residents: Chinatown, Little India, and no doubt eventually Somaliaville. As France has seen, the ghetto-ization and lack of integration of immigrant populations is a recipe for disaster.

- In my country, these cultural and linguistic silos are blamed on "multiculturalism" by profoundly misinformed critics unaware of the meaning of the term. The silos are a result of "monoculturalism"; real multiculturalism is an artefact of the Trudeau era – where schoolchildren were exposed to Chinese New Year and Ukrainian Christmas and Sikh dances and Thai food and comparative religion. If we successfully exposed new immigrants to true multiculturalism, there'd be less ghetto-ization and truer integration. Right now there's just "man, these Western guys are weird and immoral", whereas what we need is "huh, here my Persian roots are respected but I can't practice Sharia law in my home because there's this Charter of Rights and Freedoms thing I had to take a test on in order to immigrate. Looks like I'll need to give the same respect to my Mexican/Chinese/French/Jewish neighbours as I expect to receive from them."

So while bearing in mind the warning of simple answers to complex questions;

• Make babies. Babies are good. If we could hook up the old flux capacitor to the Delorean, go back to about 1985 and make a LOT of babies, problem solved.
  
• Live in (greener) cities.
  
• Bring on the Mexicans!
  
• Save Canada, vote Republican (and we'll get all the smart people)!
  
• Multiculturalism is the sane alternative to people becoming entrenched in their monoculture.

Final bit of strangeness on the "childless by choice" issue: Now, I respect this choice, but I do keep hearing one deeply weird phrase over and over again; "I'm too selfish to have children".

Okay, glad you acknowledge your human frailty, but that's a starting point, not an end point. If I said "I'm too greedy to give to charity" or "I'm too racist to hire Jamaicans" you'd hear that as a very different admission from "My apartment is too small to keep a dog", the way the "selfish" phrase keeps getting trotted out. Is it just me, or is that weird? (Although not as utterly deranged as "my cats are my children"; that's medication time for sure).

A Prayer For Bees

Pagan Blogger Hecate is doing a Blue Moon Prayer For The Bees tonight. And so will I.

Learn about Colony Collapse, and ask yourself why this is not happening to organic beekeepers.

We need bees.

Jill Tracy: The Fine Art of Poisoning

Saw goth cabaret siren Jill Tracy last night; seductive, sinister, sensual, lyrical, malevolent, curious, macabre, clever; a chanteuse who would cheerfully murder you in your sleep, then tuck you in after and kiss your forehead.

Pentecost News: Our Church is Growing! St. Francis of Assisi Gnostic Community, San Francisco

The Reverend Ms. Juliana Carnes has kickstarted a new Narthex for the AJC in San Francisco. Father Scott from Wisconsin is coming out to do an inaugural Mass at the Presidio Interfaith Chapel on June 9th, click here for details.

[A narthex, architecturally, is the porch or antechamber in a church. In the Apostolic Johannite Church we use the term to describe a study group led (usually) by a seminarian, and not by a priest (which makes it a parish).]

The God Fuse

All I need from you is agreement that it's entirely possible for either an atheist or theist world to devolve into a screaming murder festival. The religious leader sends his people into battle because he thinks God commanded it, the Stalins and Maos of the world do the same because they see their people as nothing more than meaty fuel to be ground up to feed the machinery of The State. In both cases, the people are equally dead.

[...]Christians, same deal. Every one of you have got friends and family who aren't believers. And I bet some of them are good people. Earnest people, thoughtful people. Charitable. Kind.

So... doesn't that kind of kill the premise that these people are avoiding God out of sinful rebellion or fear of having to live a godly life? After all, you've got people who are doing the hard part (self-sacrifice, patience, giving up all sorts of sinful pleasures) but are avoiding the easy part (praying and listening to a preacher talk for one hour a week). If God and the danger of Hell were that obvious, why wouldn't they just go all the way with it?

No, if there is a God, it appears that some good people honestly don't perceive him. For whatever reason. And there has to be some tolerance in God's rules for the Honest Mistake. Has to be. Otherwise we're all going to get screwed by that thing with the Sabbath being on Saturday instead of Sunday.


– The God Fuse

Very worthwhile article... but the best part:

Is This Sort Of Thing Helpful?

[DISCLAIMER: Very difficult to do this sort of thing without resorting to clichés, so bear in mind that most "orthodox" perspectives are extremely well reasoned by some of the greatest thinkers of Western Civilization over millennia and are not to be dismissed out of hand. This is merely a shorthand for pointing out some of the key differences between Gn interpretation and "traditional" interpretation.]

Sister Pamela, OSE

Congratulations to Sister Pamela upon taking her vows as a nun in the Order of Ste. Esclarmonde.

In the Name of the Fullness, of the Fallen Word, and of of the Lost Queen who is Holy Wisdom + . Amen.

AJC Gnostic Mass Sunday May 27th 3PM

St. Nicholas The Wonderworker Ukrainian Catholic Church 1112 Caledonia Avenue, Victoria (Cook Street and Caledonia, enter off the Cook St. parking lot in the back of the building) on Sunday May 27th at 3 PM.

Yes, I Did In Fact Go Shopping

The Gnostic Aesthetic

Auguste Rodin, Fallen Angel: Illusion Being Received by the Earth, 1895

I'm standing before a small bronze by Rodin, made in the same era and same neighbourhood as the salons of the Gnostic Restoration (with which both Rodin and his circle were familiar).

At once brutal and elegant, the piece speaks non-judgmentally of the tragedy of the human condition; here is Sophia Achamoth, errant Wisdom, being received by an alien world. There is an erotic surrender to the fait accompli, both divine and flawed, presenting an almost welcoming tension.

This is the true aesthetic of the living Gnostic religion. Unapologetic, engaged, erotic, tragic, brave, numinous; hinting at the other with both resignation and hunger, grief and hope, humility and bravado.

Atopia

The stench of stale cigarette smoke is ubiquitous and staggering. The food is unfathomably awful. Las Vegas is a simple machine; insert a dollar, get back 97 cents. Insert a dollar, get back 97 cents. Insert a dollar, get back 97 cents. Want to go again?

As for its reputation as Sin City, Vegas' renown is undeserved. Even in my sleepy little retirement-government-university town, the strippers get naked, the casinos never close and you can drink at 19. 18 if you're female and buxom.

Fake Ancient Egypt, Fake Olde Englande, Fake New York, Fake Hollywood, Fake Paris, Fake Venice, Fake Rome, Fake Caribbean. No real Las Vegas. No real "there" there. But fascinatingly, this placelessness creates an opportunity to explore and celebrate the inner landscapes and dreamscapes so beautifully exemplified by successes like Cirque du Soleil, and likely why it is the epicentre of stage magic and illusion. The lack of the real opens wide the gates to the parallel.

Beer and Gnosis in Las Vegas

I'm leaving for Vegas tomorrow; any LV Gnostics want to meet me for a drink Friday or Saturday?

"Faith is for sissies"

Faith is for sissies who daren’t go and look for themselves. That’s my basic position. Magic is based upon gnosis. Direct knowledge. It’s a kind of “I’m from Missouri. Show me” approach, if you like. [laughter] I think that gnosis it’s probably the original form of spirituality in mankind. If you look back at the old Gnostic religions that proceeded Christianity, what they depended on was direct knowledge of the Mysteries, or the ideas being talked about. If you look at the early Christians, the people that were allegedly around Jesus, then you can’t get much gnostic than St. Thomas. [chuckles] He has to stick his hand in the wound before he was convinced! Or you’ve got the Essenes, with John the Baptist–they were certainly gnostics. Back then, everybody formed their own relationship to the godhead, which was seen as being inside them, as much as anything.


– Alan Moore

Congratulations to Alan Moore on his nuptials this weekend!

Anniversary

Apenas te he dejado,
vas en mí, cristalina
o temblorosa,
o inquieta, herida por mí mismo
o colmada de amor, como cuando tus ojos
se cierran sobre el don de la vida
que sin cesar te entrego.

Amor mío,
nos hemos encontrado
sedientos y nos hemos
bebido toda el agua y la sangre,
nos encontramos
con hambre
y nos mordimos
como el fuego muerde,
dejándonos heridas.

Pero espérame,
guárdame tu dulzura.
Yo te daré también
una rosa.

I have scarcely left you
when you go in me, crystalline,
or trembling,
or uneasy, wounded by me
or overwhelmed with love, as when your eyes
close upon the gift of life
that without cease I give you.

My love,
we have found each other
thirsty and we have
drunk up all the water and the blood,
we found each other
hungry
and we bit each other
as fire bites,
leaving wounds in us.

But wait for me,
keep for me your sweetness.
I will give you too
a rose.


– Pablo Neruda

No Services For Mother's Day

Love your Mommy. Or somebody else's Mommy. It's all good.

Volume 3? Or something else?

Do'a Khalil Aswad

Her name was Do'a Khalil Aswad. I want to start with that. To say her name. To make her real in this space.

I forced myself to watch the jumpy, pixelated footage. The girl, so like my niece (both seventeen), her dark hair. The crowd in "sports jackets" and brown shoes. I was sick as I kept my face to the screen, to give witness when I could give nothing else. I will not look away from this.

I was surprised to find that what so sickened me was not so much what was happening, but what was not happening. No one stepped forward to face the crowd, to insert themselves between girl and stone. None to kneel and shelter and draw strands of hair from her bloody face. I would have done that. I know a hundred people who would have done that. It's not such an extraordinary thing, to risk one's own life for another. Somewhere in the world this will happen in the next second, and the second after that.

I can fathom anger. I can understand rage. Heartbreak, betrayal, and their grotesque insanities. I know my own anger: and I know I could raise a stone to build a wall or to tear one down; I could raise a stone – futile though it may be – against a tank or an icon or a building.

I cannot understand raising a stone against this girl.

I cannot understand a bystander, choosing not to intervene but rather choosing to reduce the final moments of a young woman's life to captured cellphone pixels. A screenful of others, scrolling past voicemail and ringtones and games and screensavers and MP3s to select "video record".

And pulling back there is a screen, the wrench in my gut, and my witness. All I could give her. My witness and my horror at it.

I do not pray for the dead. I have the certainty of her peace and dissolution into the eternity of love, the Pleroma. I pray for the living; those who will wake to see this woman, this girl, who was a husband's bride, a parent's child, a mob's sacrifice. I pray that they will know what they have done, what they have not done. I pray that they will cry for forgiveness from a bloodstained street, and that they will lead the call to renounce violence, renounce retaliation, renounce bronze-age legalism that renders life and promise into stripped and bruising corpse.

Make no mistake: this is what scripture looks like. This is sola scriptura, without dialogue, without engagement, without challenge or education or humanity. Without spirit. This is scripture rendered as lifeless as a cooling pool of blood from a teenage girl.

I am reminded of a holocaust story: the Germans hanging a young boy, maybe ten, eleven, while the men, assembled, look on as life is wrested from the boys glossing eyes.

"Where is God to prevent this?" cries a man from the crowd. "Where is God?"

"He is there on the gallows. He hangs there dying with us." one man replied.

Amnesty International

The Feast of St. Ratford

As we all know, this Sunday marks the unholiest day of the Gnostic liturgical calendar, requiring each of us to go shoe-shopping and drink mojitos. I'll be celebrating the day by going to see George Carlin, Discordian Prophet that he is. Also there's something about growing older, which is this annual fight I have with my driver's license.

Beltane

I am She
that is the natural
mother of all things,
mistress and governess
of all the elements,
the initial progeny of worlds,
chief of the powers divine,
Queen of all that are in the otherworld,
the principal of them
that dwell above,
manifested alone
and under one form
of all the Gods and Goddesses.


– Lucius Apuleius

I Know You're Out There

I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin.

Vesica Piscis, Sunday Mass

A new vesica piscis for the parish.

A special Mass for Beltane will be held at St. Nicholas The Wonderworker Ukrainian Catholic Church 1112 Caledonia Avenue, Victoria (Cook Street and Caledonia, enter off the Cook St. parking lot in the back of the building) on Sunday April 29th at 3 PM.

He thought I was a ghost, Mother, for I was all in white,
And I ran by him without speaking, like a flash of light.
They call me cruel-hearted, but I care not what they say,
For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

On the Silver Anniversary of My Death and Resurrection

On April 19th, 1982, I was dead for a little bit. "Flatlined" is the term since coined. The culprit was eco meningo viral encephalitis, a virus in my spinal fluid that crept up the brain-stem and ballooned, crushing the brain against the skull and turning most of my temporal lobe into pudding. This was of course after two days of unconsciousness and continual convulsions from a 105°+ fever. I was, in the words of the immortal sage Tarantino, a fish flopping on the carpet, and then a fish not flopping on the carpet. About four minutes later I resumed flopping. A cup of coffee's worth of death.

Earlier that evening my mother received a call, suggesting she return to the hospital as I was not expected to make it through the night. Prophetic, if incomplete. I deeply and sincerely apologize to my poor mother for ever getting that phone call.

Every breath, every heartbeat, every kiss and moment of my life since that night has been on borrowed time. I am so, so terribly grateful. I got Paris and San Francisco and Florianopolis. I got my children. There have been irises and snow, sisters and sailing. There has been drunkenness and idiocy, bravado and sweetness, the Southern Cross over my lover's bare shoulder. Bounced cheques and eviction notices and parking tickets and dying pets and friends fallen and mourned. Gallery shows and beaches and hot tubs and wine and starlight and her raven-black hair on white sheets. The belly-laughs of babies, sand dunes, ancient forests, old books, antique weapons. Oil on my palms in crosses.

I just read my daughter The Cat in the Hat and put her to bed. Maybe you know what that's worth.

Thank you, life. And thank you, death, for stopping by. I suppose I'll see you later.

The Dark Legacy of Carlos Castaneda

Castaneda, who disappeared from the public view in 1973, began in the last decade of his life to organize a secretive group of devoted followers. His tools were his books and Tensegrity, a movement technique he claimed had been passed down by 25 generations of Toltec shamans. A corporation, Cleargreen, was set up to promote Tensegrity; it held workshops attended by thousands. Novelist and director Bruce Wagner, a member of Castaneda's inner circle, helped produce a series of instructional videos. Cleargreen continues to operate to this day, promoting Tensegrity and Castaneda's teachings through workshops in Southern California, Europe and Latin America.

At the heart of Castaneda's movement was a group of intensely devoted women, all of whom were or had been his lovers. They were known as the witches, and two of them, Florinda Donner-Grau and Taisha Abelar, vanished the day after Castaneda's death, along with Cleargreen president Amalia Marquez and Tensegrity instructor Kylie Lundahl. A few weeks later, Patricia Partin, Castaneda's adopted daughter as well as his lover, also disappeared. In February 2006, a skeleton found in Death Valley, Calif., was identified through DNA analysis as Partin's.

– The dark legacy of Carlos Castaneda

Carlos Castaneda was evil in a way that Anton LaVey or Aleister Crowley only pretended to be because they thought it was funny. Castaneda misrepresented and exploited the spiritual cultures of First Nations, resulting in the shockwave of exploitourism that broke open the fragile and intimate traditions of ancient peoples with a tenuous grasp to their past. All spilt open like rotten fruit at the literary machete of a self-aggrandizing, predatory egomaniacal millionaire cultist.

Taken as fiction, Castaneda's work can be seen as an inner Hero's Journey with much to offer. Instead, he presented a fraud and insisted on the authenticity of his books. He could have had the legacy of Blake or Tolkien, champions of imagination and inner landscape. Instead he chose the path of Samael Aeon Weor, L. Ron Hubbard and Sylvia Browne; exploitation, megalomania, and cultism. Rather than insight and liberation, Castaneda himself encouraged dependency, pyschosis, suicide, and murder.

This is reminiscent of the debate in our own community, of "literalism" vs. "inspirational poetry". It is Castaneda's demand that his work be regarded as the former which renders it the spiritual toxin it is.

Bishop Hoeller has produced a lecture series devoted to Castaneda, in which he seems to be quite complimentary. Lovely. It reminds me of people who wear Che Guevara tee shirts; while Guevara's early writings showed compassion and even glimmers of gnosis, in his later life he was the doctor responsible for overseeing Castro's torture program. He'd keep torture victims alive to prolong their suffering, checking their vital signs before sending them back to their cells to be starved, beaten, raped, drowned, and electrocuted. He also argued for the necessity of starting a nuclear war against American cities. Nice guy, very tee shirt worthy. Practically Gandhi.

The Face of the Sky and Earth

"A deeply personal, unique journey through the Gospel of Thomas... Puma approaches the text with reverence, wit, and humility to illuminate the contemporary spiritual message for those seeking an intimate connection with God.  At once gentle, quirky, and sincerely curious, it is a heartfelt exploration of the relevance of timeless themes.  A must-read for anyone with a connection to early Christianity and Gnostic inquiry."

217 pages, paperback
$16.95

Pictures From AJC Conclave

Photos courtesy Rev. Mr. Anthony Silvia. Thank you!
Above: Bishops +McCann and +Behun ordain Father Scott+ in St. Gabriel's Parish, Madison WI
Below: Father Scott performs Mass aided by Anthony of St. Sarah the Egyptian Narthex, Lowell MA.

Congratulations to Father Scott Rassbach+

...who was ordained at St. Gabriel Parish in Madison Wisconsin yesterday, at the hands of both Bishop +Shaun McCann and Bishop Dr. +William Behun of the Apostolic Johannite Church.

Most Holy Logos, whose strength is in silence, grant that these your servants whom now you join unto yourself in the holy bond of the Priesthood, may hence forward minister faithfully of the priestly power to those who ask in your Name.

Amen.

Corinthians 2:6-8

"Yet among the mature we do speak of Sophia, though it is not the Sophia of this Aeon or of the Archons, who are doomed to perish. But we speak of the Holy Sophia, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the Aeons for our glory. None of the Archons understood this."

Eastertide: Greatest Hits

Sorry nothing new for this year, but with new job and recent health challenges, not much time for new stuff, and not quite up to Easter Mass. Anyway, if you're new to all this and looking for a Gnostic take on Easter, here are a few past musings;

Palm Sunday

Good Friday

Easter Monday

שָׁלוֹם

Galloping Decrepitude Update

Racing Heart, get it?

For the last month or so, I've been experiencing cardiac arhythmia (boom chicka boom squish boom boom chicka) to an increasing degree. Over the last ten days this has become daily attacks of chest pain, shortness of breath, pressure, nausea, dizziness, and blurred vision. Like a panic attack, only without the panic. It's been bloody awful.

Now "anxiety" – even though I'm not anxious at all – is one of the possible sides of my anti-seizure meds (which ironically has an off-label use as an anti-anxiety med as well. Note to self, meds are weird.) so I thought it might be that, but I've been on them for 4 months now so any sides would've presented by now. Other than that, btw, this is a great drug with very mild mild sides and is keeping my seizures down about 95%. Which means I'm still having some fairly nasty breakthrough seizures. But as I remind myself, it beats being dead, which I was briefly during the Reagan administration. And my back-from-the-grave-ness bestowed me with the Gift That Is Epilepsy, just like Caesar and Alexander the Great and Byron. Anyway, back to the ticker.

I went to the doctor and yesterday had an ECG (EKG) and a chest x-ray. This morning I had a fasting blood test which was mercifully located next to Starbucks so I didn't have to drive my starving blood-drained (sugar free!) self to the nearest pastry. So we shall see if the problem is hardware (muscular mechanics, structural) or software (chemical/signal/meds-induced). And yes, I'm a pretty low stress person, healthy eater (by North American standards anyway), and my coffee intake is at a quarter century low. Anyway, upshot is I'm not firing on all cylinders at the moment, prayers are always appreciated, and I'm just laying low for a while.

Services for Sunday will be cancelled, as I'm doing a funeral and regrettably won't have the oomph to do Mass after. I'm sorry! Holy Wisdom, send our parish more clergy!

Not Doing So Well

Bear with me. I'll be back.

St. Sarah the Egyptian Narthex

An overdue announcement regarding the St. Sarah the Egyptian Narthex of the Apostolic Johannite Church, under the care of St. Raphael seminarian Rev. Mr. Anthony Silvia in Massachusetts.


Saint Sarah is a patron saint venerated by the Roma (Gypsy) people. She is also known as Sara-la-Kali (Sara the black) . The center of her cult is Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, a place of pilgrimage for Roma in the Camargue, in southern France, where legend identifies her as the servant of the two saints Mary commemorated in the town. An alternative legend has her as a pagan of noble birth and being converted to the faith of Abraham.

The Order of Saint Esclarmonde

On this day of the Martyrdom of the Holy Cathars of Montsegur, March 16th

The Order of Saint Esclarmonde is a Gnostic, monastic lay Order open to women and men, sponsored by both the Gnostic Church of Mary Magdalene and the Apostolic Johannite Church. Novices are not required to be members of either church.

The purpose of the Order is to provide structure to committed, solitary, traditional spiritual practice. Nuns and Monks of the Order commit to mindfulness, daily contemplation, and community action through charitable works. During daily prayer, nuns and monks wear the traditional white alb and white cincture as both a reminder of their connection to others undertaking this work, and as a symbol of purification.

Saint Esclarmonde was an early 13th century Cathar mystic. She is traditionally identified as the woman who successfully debated the virtues of Catharism against the founder of the Inquisition, St. Dominic. Legend has it that when the Inquisition finally came to take her to her execution, she turned into a dove and flew away. Her legend was romanticized during the Napoleonic era to the point where she became a kind of Cathar Joan of Arc and patroness of the revival of art and mysticism of the 19th century.

The Proctor for female novices is Reverend Mother Marsha Emrick+ of the GCMM, while male novices are Proctored by Monsignor Jordan Stratford+ of the AJC. Aspirants are required to provide the following:

1. A photocopy of government-issued picture identification
   
   
2. A criminal background check
   
   
3. A 1000 word essay on their spritual journey
   
   
4. A curriculum vitae
   
   
5. A letter of reference
   
   
6. A commitment to a donation to charity of either $99 or 10 hours volunteer service to a charitable organization within 12 weeks of vows.

I. Rule

0. In the Name of the Fullness, of the Fallen Word, and of of the Lost Queen who is Holy Wisdom. Amen.

1. Listen. Attend with the ear of your heart, enlightened by the Wisdom of the Mother, the Holy Spirit

2. Every time you begin a work, intentionally pray most earnestly to bring it to perfection

3. Let us wake. "It is  high time for us to arise from sleep. Run while you have the light of life."

4. Be mindful. The Fullness who is at once Mother and Father of us all resides in the cell of our own hearts.

5. "Be still and know that I am God"

6. Therefore we intend to establish a school in Wisdom's service. In abiding by this code, we hope to set down nothing harsh, nothing burdensome. We know the universe is the image of our own selves — we create as we recreate life. Do not be daunted and run from compassionate Presence. It is bound to  be narrow at the outset. As we progress in this way of life, we shall run on the path of the Commandment of Love. As we surrender to the Infinite, our neighbor, and ourselves, our hearts will overflow with the inexpressible delight of love, and through patience share in the Presence of the Divine. Amen.

II. Vows
 
All the Monks and Nuns shall annually renew their either on Montsegur Day (March 16th) or the Sunday closest to said date.
 
In the Name of the Fullness, of the Fallen Word, and of of the Lost Queen who is Holy Wisdom. Amen
 
Be it known that on this day before God and my fellow companions that I avow:
 
To abide by the common Rule of the Order of Saint Esclarmonde; in listening, intention, waking, mindfulness, stillness and compassion

To contemplate scripture that I may deepen my understanding.

To practice hospitality to all I meet.

To treat each member of the Community of Esclarmonde with love and respect as a brother or sister in Gnosis.

To be accountable for my actions and to make amends to those who I cause harm.

All these things do I vow In the Name of the Fullness, of the Fallen Word, and of of the Lost Queen who is Holy Wisdom. Amen+

III. Prayer

Holy Mother,
Rightful Queen of faithful souls,
Who never erred,
Who never lied,
Follower of the rightful course,
Who never doubted
lest we should accept death
in the realm of the wrong god;
as we do not belong to this realm
and this realm is not ours –
teach us Your gnosis
and to love what You love.

*traditional Cathar prayer, 13th century

Innocent Until Proven Guilty

Here's an interesting thing about scriptural scholarship: we know that the authors' words are a fairly accurate account of the authors' take on the subject, because the authors are contemporary to themselves. Here is me, writing down what I think. Do I really mean that, I ask? Oh yes, I answer, because I'm still around to ask for clarification. What we don't know is if the author has an accurate take on something that happened before they were around - unless they have primary sources on which to draw.

When the authors of "The Gospel of Judas" sat down and wrote the thing, they were under no illusions that any such events had taken place. It was an obvious parable. So the characters are speaking words that the authors themselves were speaking. This makes GoJu a "primary source", and written at the same time, albeit a different setting, as the material it deals with. It's like Shakespeare asking himself if Puck just mentioned a particular something to Oberon. Midsummer is a primary source into Will's mind. Both Puck and Oberon are creatures of Shakespeare's imagination, as is his Caesar, even though there was a real Caesar who likely never said the things that his Shakespearean counterpart did. So too we have a Jesus and a Thomas and a Judas etc. who are not their historic inspirations. What we're left with though is a safe assumption that when we read Judas or Thomas, that the Gnostics are speaking for themselves.

The canonical Gospels, on the other hand, are secondary sources. Written generations after the events they describe after all the participants were dead, there was nobody around to ask for clarification. But these accounts are taken to be historically factual, which is problematic given the long period between the stories' origins and their textual codification, so we can't safely assume that the early Christians are speaking for themselves: It's their great-grandchildren (metaphorically) speaking on their behalf. The canonical Gospels are innocent until proven guilty, that is to say, hearsay with no contemporary supporting evidence to indict Jesus as saying, well, anything specific.

So we have the curious circumstance where the fiction is more reliable than the history, because the fiction was written by the fiction's creators, but the history was not written by history-makers. There's too much time and too much trauma – the war and the destruction of the temple – between the Gospel events and their textual depiction. So we can know what the Gnostics of the second century were thinking, and we can infer what the Christians of the second century were thinking, but we can't be sure of what the Christians of the first century were thinking, because the Gospel authors didn't have any primary sources.

Ask A Gnostic Priest: Anthology

I collect and read scripture, kind of as a hobby, and have been trying to slowly build a small library of scriptural classics from around the world for the past few years. I'd like to include a volume or two of Gnostic scriptures in my collection, as well as a reference book or two so that I can actually understand them in context when I try to read them. What (3 or 4) books would you suggest for someone who is primarily interested in knowing about your religion for curiousity's sake, as opposed to exploring it in a more personal/spiritual way?

At $18 for the paperback, the above (click on pic for amazon and/or publisher info) is the best and most readable anthology by far of Gn and related scripture.

Now I've just finished reading Jeremy Puma's excellent soon-to-be-published manuscript The Face of the Sky and Earth, which is his own personal journey through the Gospel of Thomas. I'll be posting a link to it here once it's available.

Pope Chelsea XII: Are Jesuits Catholic?

THIS "PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY" is the motto of the new Jesuit nomenklatura, and the men who made themselves superiors in the 1970s understood clearly that you can write or say pretty much anything you want, provided you keep open your semantic lines of retreat. Thus the German theologian Karl Rahner was able to exhort his fellow Jesuits: "You must remain loyal to the papacy in theology and in practice, because that is part of your heritage to a special degree, but because the actual form of the papacy remains subject, in the future too, to an historical process of change, your theology and ecclesiastical law has above all to serve the papacy as it will be in the future."

See the move? Our current Jesuits are all loyal to the papacy, but to the future papacy--that of Pope Chelsea XII, perhaps--and their support for contraception, gay sex, and divorce proceeds from humble obedience to this conveniently protean pontiff.

I read this quote months ago and regretted not keeping it, just found it again. Conservatives are funny!

Priest Tees

Inspired by the infamous tuxedo tee



I like to wear this one to Jesuit bars. And tent revivals.



Why did you decide to become a priest?

International AJC News

His Excellency, The Most Rev. Mar Calixto Andreas, Jesus Arco Garcia, Archbishop and Primate of Spain

Congratulations to Father Rene Miramontes+ of Mexico on his Ordination to the priesthood of the Apostolic Johannite Church. Fr. Renee+ was ordained this weekend by +Jesus Arco Garcia at the Parish of San Juan y San Andrés, Madrid.

We hope to hear news of an AJC parish in Mexico soon. Road trip!

A Leading Conservative Catholic Theologian and the Tarot

“A thinking, praying Christian of unmistakable purity reveals to us the symbols of Christian Hermeticism in its various levels of mysticism, gnosis and magic, taking in also the Cabbala and certain elements of astrology and alchemy. These symbols are summarized in the twenty-two “Major Arcana”of the tarot cards. By way of the Major Arcana, the author seeks to lead meditatively into the deeper, all embracing wisdom of the Catholic mystery.”


-Hans Urs von Balthasar

Rilkean Heart

We say release, and radiance, and roses,
and echo upon everything that's known;
and yet, behind the world our names enclose is
the nameless: our true archetype and home.


– Rainer Rilke

Proclamation from the Gnostic Papacy Concerning Jesus' Tomb

Ahem.

Thank you, Jesse, for letting me borrow the Gnostic Papal Tiara, which you fairly won in a haiku contest on my blog.

The Pronouncement is as follows:

Hey, stupid journalists! This tomb phenomenon has ZERO to do with Gnosticism, ancient or modern. Stop using the "g" word in your idiotic reporting!

Also, we took a poll, and all the cool Gnostics think the tomb thing is bullshit anyway.

Thank you, and I now return you to your regular Gnostic Pope, at least until this year's haiku contest.

[My favourite quote from all of this fiasco is from the Israeli archaeologist who made the discovery in 1980: When asked, on a scale of one to ten, ten being "this is Jesus' tomb" and one being absolutely impossible, he replied "One, one and half maybe."]

The Gnostic World View

1. Who we really are is eternal and immortal; we're not defined by our bodies or our gender or our horoscopes or our nationalities. Our responsibility is to be integral to this infinite core of being, in ourselves and others. The material universe is temporary and limited, but our real selves are ultimately unconstrained by it.

2. The system is not the world; the daily waking reality of economics and politics and bureaucracy, of cruelty and injustice, was not created by the Divine, but by the forces of ignorance and greed. We don't reject rocks and trees and flowers and sex, we reject an unjust system imposed upon these things. This system forces us to feel separated from God, when the reality is that this separation is just an illusion. The system doesn't like to be understood in this way; it thinks it should be in charge, and our divinity and our humanity should take a back seat to "the way of the world". In this way the system is adversarial to the Gnostic. We see others "worshipping" this system, as though it were the true God.

3. Faith will not save us from the system; we have to first have gnosis – enlightenment – and then understand how our own Divine Spark relates to the world around us. Gnosticism is an experiential, not creedal, religion - you can't simply announce that you agree with a list of ideas and be saved from the illusion of our separation from God. Real salvation requires a critical, inquisitive mind and a compassionate and accommodating heart. We need wit and sorrow and joy and silence and deep questions.

4. Wisdom is in the world and wants to be known; the gifts of our intuition and imagination are not secondary in our efforts to remember our connection to the Infinite Divine. So the practices and approaches of what has generally been referred to as "mysticism" are at the heart of the Gnostic's journey. Dreams and fairy tales, myth and metaphor, secret and cypher, symbol and poetry comprise the language with which the Gnostic interprets the constant signal from the inbreaking Divine.

"Man's consciousness was created to the end that it may (1) recognize its descent from a higher unity; (2) pay due and careful regard to this source; (3) execute its commands intelligently and resposibly and; (4) thereby afford the psyche as a whole the optimum degree of life and development."


- Carl Gustav Jung

The Problem of Paul

excerpt from: The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity 
by Hyam Maccoby

...in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus speaks and acts as a Pharisee, though the Gospel editors have attempted to conceal this by representing him as opposing Pharisaism even when his sayings were most in accordance with Pharisee teaching. In the present book, I have used the rabbinical evidence to establish an opposite contention: that Paul, whom the New Testament wishes to portray as having been a trained Pharisee, never was one. The consequences of this for the understanding of early Christianity are immense. [...]

Why, therefore, is Paul always so concerned to stress that he came from a Pharisee background? A great many motives can be discerned, but there is one that needs to be singled out here: the desire to stress the alleged continuity between Judaism and Pauline Christianity. Paul wishes to say that whereas, when he was a Pharisee, he mistakenly regarded the early Christians as heretics who had departed from true Judaism, after his conversion he took the opposite view, that Christianity was the true Judaism. All his training as a Pharisee, he wishes to say -- all his study of scripture and tradition -- really leads to the acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament. So when Paul declares his Pharisee past, he is not merely proclaiming his own sins -- 'See how I have changed, from being a Pharisee persecutor to being a devoted follower of Jesus!' -- he is also proclaiming his credentials -- 'If someone as learned as I can believe that Jesus was the fulfilment of the Torah, who is there fearless enough to disagree?'

On the face of it, Paul's doctrine of Jesus is a daring departure from Judaism. Paul was advocating a doctrine that seemed to have far more in common with pagan myths than with Judaism: that Jesus was a divine-human person who had descended to Earth from the heavens and experienced death for the express purpose of saving mankind. The very fact that the Jews found this doctrine new and shocking shows that it plays no role in the Jewish scripture, at least not in any way easily discernible. Yet Paul was not content to say that his doctrine was new; on the contrary, he wished to say that every line of the Jewish scripture was a foreshadowing of the Jesus-event as he understood it, and that those who understood the scripture in any other way were failing in comprehension of what Judaism had always been about. So his insistence on his Pharisaic upbringing was part of his insistence on continuity. [...]

So Paul's claim to expert Pharisee learning is relevant to a very important and central issue -- whether Christianity, in the form given to it by Paul, is really continuous with Judaism or whether it is a new doctrine, having no roots in Judaism, but deriving, in so far as it has an historical background, from pagan myths of dying and resurrected gods and Gnostic myths of heaven-descended redeemers. Did Paul truly stand in the Jewish tradition, or was he a person of basically Hellenistic religious type, but seeking to give a colouring of Judaism to a salvation cult that was really opposed to everything that Judaism stood for? [...]

1. Paul was never a Pharisee rabbi, but was an adventurer of undistinguished background. He was attached to the Sadducees, as a police officer under the authority of the High Priest, before his conversion to belief in Jesus. His mastery of the kind of learning associated with the Pharisees was not great. He deliberately misrepresented his own biography in order to increase the effectiveness of missionary activities.

2. Jesus and his immediate followers were Pharisees. Jesus had no intention of founding a new religion. He regarded himself as the Messiah in the normal Jewish sense of the term, i.e. a human leader who would restore the Jewish monarchy, drive out the Roman invaders, set up an independent Jewish state, and inaugurate an era of peace, justice and prosperity...

3. The first followers of Jesus, under James and Peter, founded the Jerusalem Church after Jesus's death. They were called the Nazarenes, and in all their beliefs they were indistinguishable from the Pharisees...

4. Paul, not Jesus, was the founder of Christianity as a new religion which developed away from both normal Judaism and the Nazarene variety of Judaism. In this new religion, the Torah was abrogated as having had only temporary validity. The central myth of the new religion was that of an atoning death of a divine being. Belief in this sacrifice, and a mystical sharing of the death of the deity, formed the only path to salvation. Paul derived this religion from Hellenistic sources, chiefly by a fusion of concepts taken from Gnosticism and concepts taken from the mystery religions, particularly from that of Attis...

Paul is regarded as never losing his essential Pharisaism, but this is now viewed as good, and as a means of rescuing Christianity from isolation from Judaism. To be Jewish and yet not to be Jewish, this is the essential dilemma of Christianity, and the figure of Paul, abjuring his alleged Pharisaism as a hindrance to salvation and yet somehow clinging to it as a guarantee of authority, is symbolic.


– The Problem of Paul

Fascinating stuff, and I'm not edumacated enough to comment...

The Quest For Chinchin's Brain

In November, my 2 year old son, Sebastian ("Sebas-chin", hence "Chinchin") had a febrile seizure resulting from a 42° temperature. Scary stuff, 911 call, ambulance ride. Exhausting, but mercifully "common" in that this is what happens when infants get too hot; they seize. But due to the family history of epilepsy, the neuros wanted to have a look. Just to rule out epilepsy.

So we make the appointment for Chinchin's EEG - and I take him to the wrong hospital, the hospital where I just had mine done. So we rebook. A few weeks later, we take him to the right hospital, where they give him a sedative to make him drunk and fall asleep. You know, wine drunk.

But he doesn't react quite that cooperatively. Rather than the "drowsy wine drunk", he became "crazy tequila drunk"; climbing shelves, pulling things off counters, pulling the fire alarm at the hospital. Little things like that. We gave up, rebooked, and ordered a larger dose of tranq for next time.

Today was next time. Problem is, bigger dose, bigger tequila crazy. For two hours Z watched him zip round the lab like a ferret on crack. Z's strategy was to stop singing him lullabyes and keeping him on the hospital bed, strap him into the stroller and just talk with the tech and ignore him. Bore him into unconsciousness, really.

Then the lab tech glued 22 electrodes to his head while he snored away, resulting in an entirely uneventful and perfectly normal infant EEG.

Compare the pic above with this one of me a few months ago.

Dies Cinerum

Two quick stories:

At my grandmother's funeral, there were tears and frustration over words unsaid; there was mourning and sadness and sorrow and regret. My pall-bearing cousins and I, in ill fitting teenage suits and flat soled shoes, lifted the enormous and ostentatious casket from the service hall and up the wet grass to the gravesite. My grandmother was never a tall woman, but she was, shall we say, a substantial woman. And the casket's weight was roughly equivalent to that of a small car. With the surprising weight, the slick terrain, and the inappropriateness of our footwear, the procession was less than graceful and solemn. We were slipping around like geese landing on a frozen lake. And we got the giggles. The cartoon was playing in our heads of the lot of us going arse over teakettle, the casket flopping over and my poor, freshly-laminated ancestress rolling down the hill – a scenario mercifully but narrowly avoided.

Another story: At my daughter's birth, the labour seemed longer than the pregnancy. The scare was that the placenta was dangerously close to the exit sign, and that tearing could occur during delivery, disrupting blood / oxygen flow at a critical moment. To complicate matters, there was mec (a dangerous radioactive toxic goo from outer space) in the amniotic fluid, which means a risk of infection to both mother and babe. There was horror and blood and screaming and precious new life.

So there is life in death, and death in life.

At Christmas, the land is barren, the world frozen. And there is this tiny little solar spark, so distant it is just one shining star in the heavens rather than the full light of day. Life amidst the death of winter.

At Easter, the land is lush and green and scented, wet and open and nourished from rain. The sun has triumphed over its banishment. And yet amidst this abundance and fertility there is the Sacrifice. Death amidst the life of spring.

At Palm Sunday, before Easter, palm fronds are the "red carpet" welcoming the Divine into the House of Peace ("Jerusalem"), preparing a path as the Logos ascends His throne. Solar crosses are made from the fronds and kept for almost a year, to be burned today, on Ash Wednesday. The palm ashes are drawn on the congregants' foreheads in the shape of the cross; a public declaration of atonement 40 days before the Ascension and Divine Sacrifice – dirt as a sign of purity. Part of this act of purification involves personally fasting or relinquishing –sacrificing– something of ourselves. A habit. A routine. A treat. Just as we did at Advent, we're reminding ourselves that something magic is coming and we need to be ready, to be more attentive, to be more pure.

The part of ourselves that is to be nourished by the coming magic doesn't need that hour of TV or that latté or that gossip. We're identifying the addictively trivial, and committing ourselves to put it in its place for 40 days. That's what Lent is; reminding ourselves that some things pass and don't matter, and that some things are eternal and DO matter, and we're taking that message to our bodies, our behaviours. It's worth the attentiveness, the mindfulness.

Remember that we are clothed in ashes; but

Resplendent and unfading is Sophia, and she is readily perceived by those who love her, and found by those who seek her.

[I'm giving up coffee. It was either that or blogging. Wish me luck.]

Acolyte

Some Guy, Newly-minted Acolyte Reverend Mr. Shawn Johnston (with chrism still burning a hole into his forehead), and Rev. Mr. Stu Berry at Regina Coeli (Queen of Heaven) Parish. Photo: Mrs. Wife Lady

Congratulations to St. Raphael seminarian Rev. Mr. John Shawnston Shawn Johnston of St. Julian of Norwich Narthex on his Baptism, Chrismation, and Admission to the Acolytate of the Apostolic Johannite Church.

Shawn is one of those brave souls who wakes up in the morning, looks up to the Infinite Divine and says, "You want me to be a what?" and goes and gets himself on the road to the priesthood anyway.

These sacraments, the lunar initiation of Baptism, the mercurial initiation of Chrismation, are always a celebration of life – and as Shawn's life is loud and messy, numerous parish children celebrated his rites of passage by serenading us with howler monkey calls and by throwing raisins at the floor. Joy comes in many forms.

And no, we are not getting a kickback from Gaspard and Sons for appearing in matching flax albs. Although we should at least get air miles. I mean, c'mon.

Gnostic Celeb Watch: We Got Joni Mitchell

"A self-described Buddhist-Gnostic hybrid..."

– The Globe and Mail

Gnostic Mass, Baptism, Chrismation, and Minor Orders, Sunday February 18th 4PM

A special Mass this Sunday will include the Rites of Baptism, Chrismation, and Minor Orders for the Rev. Mr. Shawn Johnston of St. Julian of Norwich Narthex in Vancouver.

The Reverend Mr. Johnston is a seminarian at St. Raphael the Archangel Theological Seminary, and his admission to Minor Orders are part of his path to the Gnostic priesthood.

Please note change in time.

On the Feast of the Holy Valentinus: The Hot Pleroma of Love

The Holy of the Holies is the bridal chamber – The Gospel of Philip

While His Wisdom mediates on the Logos, and since his teaching expresses it, his gnosis has been revealed. His honor is a crown upon it. Since His joy agrees with it, His glory exalted it. It has revealed His image. It has obtained his rest. His love took bodily form around it. His trust embraced it. Thus the Logos of the Father goes forth into the All, being the fruit of His heart and expression of His will. It supports the All. It chooses and also takes the form of the All, purifying it, and causing it to return to the Father and to the Mother.

God came and destroyed the division, and he brought the hot Pleroma of love, so that the cold may not return.


– St. Valentine c.100-153, The Gospel of Truth

[Happy V-day, gentle readers. Consider yourselves all <3'd and dipped in chocolate]

Passion Play

Magdalene is trembling
Like a washing on a line
Trembling and gleaming
Never before was a man so kind
Never so redeeming

Enter the multitudes
In exxon blue
In radiation rose
Ecstasy
Now you tell me
Who you gonna get to do the dirty work
When all the slaves are free?
(who’re you gonna get)

I am up a sycamore
Looking through the leaves
A sinner of some position
Who in the world can this heart healer be
This magical physician

Enter the multitudes
In exxon blue
In radiation rose
Misery
Now you tell me
Who you gonna get to do the dirty work
When all the slaves are free?
(who’re you gonna get)

Enter the multitudes
The walking wounded
They come to this diver of the heart
Of the multitudes
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done

Oh, climb down, climb down he says to me
From the middle of unrest
They think is light is squandered
But he sees a stray in the wilderness
And I see how far I’ve wandered

Enter the multitudes
In exxon blue
In radiation rose
Apathy
Now you tell me
Who you gonna get to do the dirty work
When all the slaves are free?
(who’re you gonna get)

Enter the multitudes
The walking wounded
They come to this diver of the heart
Of the multitudes
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done

Oh, all around the marketplace
The buzzing of the flies
The buzzing and the stinging
Divinely barren
And wickedly wise
The killer nails are ringing

Enter the multitudes
In exxon blue
In radiation rose
Tragedy
Now you tell me
Who you gonna get to do the dirty work
When all the slaves are free?
(who’re you gonna get)


– Joni Mitchell

The Iguanodon Problem

In 1822, an English geologist (with the aid of his wife) unearthed a fossil tooth of a large horse-headed reptile. They had discovered one of the first animals now classified as dinosaurs. Along with the tooth was a fossil that looked decidedly like a rhinoceros horn. Now the scientist, Gideon Mantell, had seen a rhino, and knew exactly where the horn went: right on the nose.

He drew pictures of the iguanodon with the nose horn. He had a huge model built that toured England – head horn and all.

As more iguanodon skeletons were unearthed, it was discovered that the pokey thing was not a head horn at all, but a thumb. Yes, Mantell had in fact discovered evolution's first hitchhiker. Science, being good and proper, admitted its mistake and issued new drawings with the thumbs on the iguanodon's hands and not its head.

In a similar archaeological field, 19th century scholars of Gnosticism too had their limited fossil records. The thumb they erroneously glued to the head was "world hating Manichaean dualism" and drew pictures and built models of world-hating Gnostics accordingly. All good biblical scholars knew that Gnostics were world-hating dualists and considered matter and the flesh evil, just as every good 19th century paleontologist knew the iguanodon had a thumb on his head.

The difference is that paleontology learned from its mistake as new evidence came to light. Gnostic scholarship has not. It is not too much of an exaggeration to claim that many big-ticket Gnostic scholars - the translators of the most popular editions that you either own or are in your local library - accurately read the Coptic translations of original Greek manuscripts, and upon reading that Gnostics did NOT hate the world, shake their heads and say "that can't be right" and force a translation to comply with the world-hating dualist assumption. In other words, upon finding a complete iguanadon skeleton, they are snapping the thumb off the hand and gluing it to the head. Over and over and over.

The metaphor may be further extended by pointing out that scholars are mixing in the skeletal remains of a completely different dinosaur by constantly equating Gnosticism with Manichaeanism. Bishop Hoeller does this too, and it's both wildly irresponsible and academically indefensible.

Even last year, with the unveiling of Judas many scholars were bellowing "behold the world-hating dualism!" when it is not only an obvious misreading but a ham-fisted and forced misrepresentation.

It's just not in there. Nor is it in The Gospel of Truth, The Gospel of Thomas, The Naassene Psalm, or Thunder: Perfect Mind.

So if the overwhelming majority of Gnostic scripture shows a reverent care for the material world , clearly contradicting Manichaean dulaism while stressing the eternity of the Spirit, why is it that Meyer, Robinson, Barnstone, Williams, King, et al are all still touring with the horn-headed iguanodon model?

I don't know of any other branch of science that would tolerate this.

I Guess It's Just Our Turn To Be The Homicidal Conspiracy

...despite our lack of albino zealots.

The plot turns on a legend from the Talmud that says in every generation, the fate of the world rests in the hands of 36 righteous people known as lamed vovniks or "hidden ones." These special people don't know they are one of the chosen 36, and neither does anyone else.

The lamed vovniks just go about their everyday lives, doing what is right and good and keeping the rest of the world from God's wrath.

In The Book of Names, a (fictional) nefarious offshoot sect of the ancient Gnostic tradition known as the Gnoseos has learned the identities of 33 of 36 lamed vovniks and has set about assassinating them to hasten the end of the world.

Through plot murder-mystery-meets-mysticism plot twists, the book's hero, a political science professor named David Shepherd, uncovers the Gnoseos' plans and also realizes that his young stepdaughter is one of the remaining three lamed vovniks the Gnoseos -- whose members include heads of state and other luminati -- are systematically murdering.


– Spiritual thriller flying off shelves

Just a refresher: It was bigotry when the Protocols alleged that a Jewish conspiracy goes around murdering people. It was bigotry when The da Vinci Code alleged that a Catholic conspiracy goes around murdering people. It is bigotry when The Book of Names alleges that a Gnostic conspiracy goes around murdering people.

It's even bigotry to allege that a Satanist conspiracy goes around murdering people, although they probably appreciate the PR.

[ PS: There is a damp cell in the low-rent district in Hades for Vogelin who invented this "Gnostics hate the world so much they want to end it" thing. Idiot. ]

A Needle Drawn

A decade ago, a week or so after the birth of my second son a woman I didn't know very well – a friend of a circle of friends – approached me with a gift. A gorgeous, hand sewn crib quilt. I was taken aback at the amount of effort that had gone into this, and before that moment I wasn't sure she knew my name. But there she had been, an outsider among outsiders, working quietly to make this beautiful object in her spare hours. She was bookish, painfully shy, bright and kind. A plain girl (when I knew her, girl is the right word) who I doubt owned makeup or a decent pair of shoes; round faced, soft hands, modest. I never saw her without a needle in her hand.

Such women, in my experience, invariably have a rapier wit, a bawdy side, and a lovely singing voice, but I didn't get to see any of these. I have no doubt they were there, though. I saw the wallflower, drawn to the fringes, a woman at home with escapists. These choices speak of a rich, inner life. But I never saw this, either. I saw the quilt.

This was in my son's crib before he was a month old. After my horrifying train wreck of a divorce, when my ex had taken *everything* and I returned to Canada without so much as plate or cup, the quilt was in a cardboard box with chipped and cracked debris she didn't want anymore. The quilt was a treasure. I washed it and tucked my son, then three, into bed with it that night.

When he became too old for such obviously babyish things, it was stored away, only to be brought out a few years later at the birth of my daughter, and then as she outgrew the crib and moved into her first bed, my newborn son took her place beneath the quilt's geometry.

I found out today that the woman, the quilt's author, died this week of brain cancer. Her name was Cathy Buckle.

A few minutes ago, I tucked in my youngest child into bed under that quilt. He is two, and the quilt will last for a hundred years. It will be there for my grandchildren, and their children. A beautiful, simple thing, made of one drawn needle after another. Time consuming, and therefore timeless. How I wish more of my life were like this; careful and beautiful and deliberate.

Someone I barely knew just died. But she gave me a gift once, and that gift touched my life and the life of my children.

Thank you.

Candlemas

Here's how to make a St. Brigid's Cross.

Lo, unbroken silence, I adore thee.
Forsake me not during my time of prayer.
Guardian angels, convene around me.

Lord, humbly my heart pleads solely to be
Safe by your side through eternity there.
Lo, unbroken silence, I adore thee.

Traveling onward, cloaked by a desert sea,
Into the sky but for a sign I stare.
Guardian angels, convene around me.

Utter stillness of the night, come free me.
Starlight, guide me across the sand so bare.
Lo, unbroken silence, I adore thee.

Dedicated to the Holy Trinity,
This fervent journey by moonlight I dare.
Guardian angels, convene around me.

Shimmering dreams foretell that I may see
The path God has chosen for me with such care.
Guardian angels, convene around me.

Lo, unbroken silence, I adore thee.


–John Marshall

Ask A Gnostic Priest: Pagans and Gnostics

Do you beleive a person can be both a pagan *and* a Gnostic?

Well I think so, personally. A wonderful oblique shot was taken at us a few months ago on a Traddie Cath blog, saying that Gnostics were just "neo-Pagans in vestments". I thought that was kind of charming. I guess when your inbox is as choked with "Jesus hates you" mail as mine, "neo-Pagans in vestments" is almost a compliment.

Modern neo-Paganism grew out of British Wicca and paganism in the 1940s, which grew out of both the Celtic Revival and the Occult Revival of the 1920s. Both of these movement specifically arose from the Gnostic Restoration of 1890. So a Gnostic pagan or Witch is just someone who's followed the breadcrumbs home, in my opinion.

There are quite a few self-identified pagans involved with the Independent Sacramamental Movement (ISM). Pagans who look pretty darn Catholic but recognize the deep natural rhythms of the liturgical year, the overt paganism of the sacraments and the pre-Christian archetypes of the saints.

Scripture Last

From the Christian perspective (and we must always bear in mind that the Christian perspective is rarely original, inheriting as it did both the pagan and Jewish world-view) the "authentic faith" has three indispensable pillars; Scripture, Tradition, and Spirit. Rejection of any of these has, for the most of the history of Christianity, been considered apostacy (literally, abandoning one's post, or shirking). It's almost always been considered a package deal, or at least thought so for longer than not (say, 500-1500 anyway).

I think it's fair to say that most conflicts that arise between persons of one religion and those of another (or none at all) tend to arise from scriptural issues. Gay marriage, for example. While the Bible doesn't actually get around to condemning loving, committed, lifelong relationships between homosexual persons, and Jesus doesn't even get around to bringing up the gay issue at all, it's pretty clear that the early church inherited Judaism's heebie-jeebies about homosexuality (and they got theirs from the Egyptians, who explicitly say there are no gays in the afterlife). This is just one debate about the role of scripture in both a secular society and in a specific Christian church, such as the Episcopal Church in the US, which is disintegrating over this very issue.

Does scripture say X is wrong? If it also says Y is wrong, are X and Y the same degree of wrong? Poly-cotton blends and shrimp cocktail are out, infanticide is just peachy. However you want to stir scripture into the mix, you're still going to have some head-scratching to go through. Most of this is due to the fact that when the Greek world got hold of the Jewish scriptures, they did so without the benefit of the midrash, the centuries-worth of debate and commentary and "don't be an idiot" which makes everything make sense. So scripture in the West was reduced to a rather static and inaccurate record rather than part of a vital, evolving narrative arc.

But of course Western religion doesn't end there; there is also tradition to contend with. Most of the time this is a blessing; the cadence of the mysteries progressing from the temples of Isis to the Marian visitations at Fatima, or the continuum of the eucharist from Mithraism and Sol Invictus to the modern Mass. But tradition also brings with it the fading snapshots of the ambient cultures from when the film was exposed: sexism, xenophobia, the social and psychic trauma at the destruction of the temple, the persecutions under Nero. When taken statically, we see modern Christians still identifying as the oppressed – a toxic and cognitively dissonant position if ever there was one. The opportunities for growth, on the other hand, occur when precedent is either discovered or re-presented: the roles of Junia and Mary Magdalene as scripturally-certified Apostles shake up the traditional baggage of male-only ordination.

Regardless, tradition prevents scripture from being the deal-breaker. When scripture rejects tradition, or doesn't get around to mentioning it (Trinity, the three tiers of major orders, etc.), we cannot resort solely to scripture without embracing apostacy, as we established in the first paragraph. So there's on occasion a circumstance in which scripture and tradition circle each other and growl.

What ensures that tradition and scripture kiss and make up is Spirit. For as long as there has been a theology in the West, Spirit has specifically included both reason and compassion, on the assumption that the Infinite Divine is both loving and rational. If we can't agree that the Infinite Divine is both loving and rational, we may as well stop here, because that's the basic assumption from the get-go.

Unlike Spirit, scripture has a relatively firm archaeological date on it. The day before someone wrote it down, it existed in an oral form only. It literally became encoded in written language, which changed it forever. So scripture, as we understand it, has a "start date" – and, for most Christians, a very definite "end date". Scripture is encapsulated in this very narrow envelope of time and culture. Scripture says the local tribal deity of one particular nation is the One True God, and that the local tribal deity of any other particular nation is not. Israelites 1, Lapplanders and Visigoths and Inuit 0.

Tradition, on the other hand, draws its strength from much broader and deeper roots, culturally, geographically, and historically. But even then, it's limited to the more-or-less Bronze Age of the more-or-less mediterranean world. Nobody asked the Olmecs what they thought. The Bottle Neck Beaker People and the Magyars and the are out in the cold. You just cannot make a meaningful, integral Catholic-as-in-universal religion out of such a specific set of tools. It's like building a house just using pliers.

Which is why where Spirit comes in. She's always been here. She's why cells divide and bunnies make baby bunnies and why snowflakes are all snowflakey. She's the Breath of Life. And not just metabolizing life; but the yearning of quarks and leptons for one another. Before scripture was a doodle on a cocktail napkin and before tradition was a "I wonder how this will go over?", the Spirit was here weaving our DNA together out of leftover ingredients from that big star-making binge. Spirit – and therefore reasoned compassion– trump scripture and tradition. Any other arrangement, such as sola scriptura, is apostacy.

For Gnostics, we do fairly well with this three-legged stool: Spirit in Her guise as Sophia is central to our work; we honour the deep roots of our tradition, and our scriptural horizon is vast, encompassing not only the Old and New Testaments but Plato, the Corpus Hermeticum, the Nag Hammadi Library, William Blake and VALIS. For us the Word of God is the Logos, not the bible. And what is the Word if not ultimately an expression ("pushing out") of Breath, (spiritus or pneuma)?

Nobody Tells Me Nuttin'

Is our own Eckhart Valentinus a Deacon now? When did this happen? Are there pics? Can we bake him a cake?

Somebody fill me in.

My Inbox

Okay, I deliberately left out the "Father McDreamy" category, as this is smaller than either the Messiah or Antichrist category (and the McDreamy messages are mostly from men, not that there's anything wrong with that). Someone on the PTG said I looked like a Sears Catalog Model, and I was so chuffed I spent the day dramatically checking my watch and pointing at things in the distance. That aside, this chart is pretty accurate.

St. Julian of Norwich Narthex, Vancouver BC

Rev. Mr. Shawn Johnston, seminarian at St. Raphael the Archangel Theological Seminary, has established a Narthex (Gnostic study group) of the Apostolic Johannite Church in Vancouver. Click here for details.

St. Julian of Norwich was a 14th-15th century mystic, and the first known woman to write a book in the English language.

More here.

David Bowie: Gnostic

More recently, I've been interested in the Gnostics


– David Bowie, 1995

2 Designers, 2 Bottles of Wine, 2 Hours, 460+ Books

The Johannite Tradition and the Plight of Modern Gnostics this Sunday on Coffee, Cigarettes and Gnosis

The Johannite Tradition and Rise of modern Gnostic Churches:  There is an ancient Gnostic tradition that places John the Baptizer as the highest Gnostic revealer, found in the doctrine of the Mandeans and the Cathars, the work of Leonardo Da Vinci and other Renaissance artists, The Templars and other esoteric entities.  We trace the roots of this conviction, all the way to the modern Apostolic Johannite Church.  We also give you a bird's eye view of the growing Gnostic Churches, communities, and online groups for those of you thirsty for a fellowship of herecy.

Jordan Stratford, author of 'The Da Vinci Prayer Book' and Priest of the Apostolic Johannite Church in Nova Albion, Canada joins 'Coffee, Cigarettes, & Gnosis' this Sunday, January 28, at 3 PM PST/5 PM CST/6 PM EST at Freethoughtmedia.com.

 
Topics Discussed:

• Why John the Baptizer, in a mythical and initiatory aspect, is as important as the Logos to various Gnostics throughout history (and why was he marginalized in the Canonicals).
  
  
• Why Apostolic Succession, two words that often make modern Gnostics cringe, is an essential dimension of any Gnostic Church (and how it differs from the Roman doctrine).
  
  
• How the Sacraments as we know them are a universal vehicle for gnosis not just in Orthodox Christianity but in Gnosticism as well as many pagan traditions.
  
  
• Some of the options for those interested in Gnosticism or even Gnostic priesthood in a still sparse Gnostic ecclesiastic webwork.
  
  
• We revisit the power of the mythological arena and the essential and rising avatar of the transcendental goddess that is Mary Magdalene.
  
  
• Why was the Gospel of John so important to Classic Gnostics (as well as the Cathars), from its feminine tone to its corruption by Orthodoxy.
  
  
• The traditions, theology and rituals of the Apostolic Johannite Church, as well as its similarities and differences to other Gnostic Churches.
  
  
• How to defend against the rising polemics against Gnostics such as 'world-haters', 'anti-Semites' and 'misogynistic'.

And much more, believe it or not.  This is an important journey in understand the origins of Gnosticism and how they manifest themselves in communal associations that, at this moment, are making significant strides and not persecuted by Orthodoxy.

 

Ask a Gnostic Priest: Hekas, Hekas, Este Bebeloi!

What are those words you sing at the start of each Mass, and what do they mean?

It means "shoo!".

Well, actually, "Away, away, all you evil things, because we're about to invoke Archangels and that's a whole can o' whoopass you don't wanna open, so this is your last warning to git while the gittin's good."

Ask a Gnostic Priest: Vestments and Praxis

Why do you wear the same vestments and share a similar organizational structure as the modern Catholic Church?

I would suggest, as a metaphor, that the pope wears socks, and you wear socks, so why are you dressing like the pope? Ah, but of course the pope does not "own" the right to wear socks, did not "invent" socks, but rather socks come from the vernacular dress of the west, evolving over millennia.

(Perhaps you have a cousin who has the same last name as you. Why are you pretending to be your cousin? You get the idea.)

The ecclesiology we use has two sources: one is the pre-Christian religious structure of pagan Rome, the other is through the more-but-not-exclusively-secular "civil service" of the empire. The vestments we use are likewise originated; four thousand years ago priests were wearing albs (white linen robes) to perform sacraments with bread and wine, and a thousand years ago secular lawyers and bankers and landowners wore chasubles. Modern business suits are evolved from military uniforms, but we don't read too much into that.

So really, the only reason we "look like Catholics" is because Catholicism deliberately chose to look like that which preceded it. Catholic priests wear the zuchetto, which is exactly the same as the Jewish yarmulke and serves the same function.

Setting all that aside, the priest collar is a shorthand: people "get" that I'm sworn to a lifetime of service, listening, advocacy, and championing/cheerleading your spiritual journey. You can tell me something in confidence, or turn to me for help. You have to admit that's pretty handy: a great deal is communicated in a very short period of time.

On another note entirely, do you have any meditative and/or ritual practices that you perform everyday that enforce and deepen your experience of gnosis?

Yes, there are four practices which I highly recommend;

1. Mindfulness: Constantly trying to keep in mind through my actions, words, purchases, moods if I'm being the person I'm supposed to be, if I'm making the world a better place. Is this coffee "fair trade", is this food local and organic? Can I be less of a jerk to the person who is getting on my nerves? Am I honestly being respectful of the people around me? Am I serving the Sacred Flame in myself and others, right here, right now?
   I fail at this all the time. I'm really quite rubbish at it. But I do continue to make the effort. At the very least it keeps me from drinking my own bathwater.
   
   
2. Candles of intention: Light a candle to express a thought, such as the health of a loved one. Just the act of turning a mental image into a physical action is clarifying and empowering, and the warmth and light are ambient reminders of that thought. It puts "first things first" and aids greatly in focus.
   
   
3. Centering Prayer. At least twice weekly, daily if you can possibly swing it. If your life is really crazy (ie small kids) it's unlikely you'll have a chance to do this in and of itself. But you can do it in the bath or just before you fall asleep.
   
   
4. Lectio Divina weekly.
   
   
   
   1. Select a sentence or two from something nice, like the Gospel of Philip or the Gospel of Truth or Thunder: Perfect Mind.
      
      
   2. Read the passage out loud, first in a normal voice, and secondly in a slower, more poetic voice.  Taste the words in your mouth and feel the vibration in your body.  Concentrate on the sound of it, the music of it.
      
      
   3. Chew on it silently.  Ask yourself what it means, why the phrasing is how it is, what the phrase is definitely NOT saying.  Do a brief textual analysis in your head.  What did word x mean to the writers and audiences in the time the text was written?
      
      
   4. Put it out there.  Ask the Divine to help you understand it.  Slow down, get quiet, and search for the deeper meaning - not intellectually but spiritual.
      
      
   5. Sit with it.  Just sit with the text in silence.  Don't allow words into your head or distractions.  Just abide with the message, the meaning.  Like sitting beside a sleeping dog on the porch at sunset.  

The Emerald Tablet

The truth, certainty, truest, without untruth.

What is above is like what is below. What is below is like what is above. The miracle of unity is to be attained.

Everything is formed from the contemplation of unity, and all things come about from unity, by means of adaptation.

Its parents are the Sun and Moon.

It was borne by the wind and nurtured by the Earth.

Every wonder is from it

and its power is complete.

Throw it upon earth,

and earth will separate from fire. The impalbable separated from the palpable.

Through wisdom it rises slowly from the world to heaven. Then it descends to the world combining the power of the upper and the lower.

Thus you will have the illumination of all the world, and darkness will disappear.

This is the power of all strength- it overcomes that which is delicate and penetrates through solids.

This was the means of the creation of the world.

And in the future wonderful developements will be made, and this is the way.

I am Hermes the Threefold Sage, so named because I hold the three elements of all Wisdom.

And thus ends the revelation of the work of the Sun.

Elaine Pagels in LA Times

Globalization is proceeding at a ferocious pace even as religious wars and ethnic cleansings occur around the world. Then there's global warming. From your study of Gnosticism, what really matters?

Some of these texts are powerful and practical today. In the Gospel of Thomas, for example, Jesus says: "If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you will kill you."

I took that statement psychologically; it's an image of the truth, illumination and divine presence to be found in every human being. It teaches that within every human life is a bit of the divine source, and everything comes from that source. Therefore, all life is to be respected as coming from God's creation.

Some critics contend that Gnosticism is narcissistic — more concerned about self-realization than in making the world a better place to live. Your response?

Opponents of these texts have always said they were written by elitist snobs. I disagree. The Gospel of Truth teaches to stretch out your hands to those who are sick and to awaken those who are asleep. God's will is that all beings come to love him and one another.

In the Gospel of Thomas, it says that we love our brother as the apple of our eye.

Again, these are esoteric texts that assume you have read the other Gospels where Jesus heals the sick and cares for the poor.

Some suggest that your descriptions of Gnostic thinking are biased by your own wishful thinking and spiritual longings.

The texts are hard to read and cryptic; much more complicated than anyone thought. So, any of us could be mistaken in our interpretations. I just want to understand them better.


–LA Times

Gnosis

And it happens and She's so there, so real and immediate and intoxicating, smelling of oranges and cinnamon and snow. And you're calm as a riverstone but humming and electric and the current is ancient and newborn and worn smooth.

Everything, all at once, and nothing. Emptied, spilling spinning in bursting overripe pomegranates of succulent fullness, seeds raining down on the wet surface of the universe, casting interlacing ripples.

And you remember all of it so goddamn perfectly; the banners and dragonflies and the fall of stars.

Oh, I get it. I remember now. So simple.

But what were you expecting, exactly? We wouldn't die for it if it weren't holy. The Cathars would not have smiled on their way to the flames if it weren't so goddamn beautiful. We wouldn't suffer the hatemail and vitriol and snide slanders or the bellowing idiocy of the caps-lock messiahs if it didn't matter.

What were you expecting, exactly?

AJC Sophianic Mass Sunday Jan 21st 3PM

In Thy name, 0 most Holy One, Whom
we affectionately call Father,
and in that of Thy Son, Who bridges the worlds,
and of Her, Thy celestial Bride and
Charming Heart to the heavens and earth alike,
we call upon Thy holy angels who stand as guardians
in the four corners of the universe to purify this house
that we pledge to the celebration of Thy mysteries.

Odd. Amusing. Clever.

Versace "Priest Chic" Hits Runway

Who's yo fathah? Yeeeeah.

No-fly Lists and Internal Passports for Children

The Honourable Lawrence Cannon
Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities


Honourable Sir -

As a parent and as a Canadian, I am extremely concerned about the implementation of a no-fly list within Canada. Today CanWest reports that children will be required to travel with government photo-ID: a passport, as this is the only such identification available.

The adoption of an "internal" passport for Canadians of any age is deeply offensive to those who value civil liberties and the basic freedoms for which generations of Canadians sacrificed their lives. But to require this of those "who appear to be 12 years old" is doubly offensive.

I urge you to consider that there is no evidence whatsoever that a "no-fly list" – a concept radically in opposition to Canadian values – would in any way make air transport safer for passengers.

Americanization of our transportation and security protocols will only result in the American-style erosion of civil liberties, abuse of authority and the devaluation of citizenship. These measures benefit no-one and serve only to foster mistrust among ourselves and resentment towards front-line staff. I believe that a "no-fly list" and internal passports for children both harms and denies who we are as a nation.



Sincerely,


Father Jordan Stratford+
Apostolic Johannite Church
Regina Coeli Parish, Victoria BC Canada

Ask A Gnostic Priest: Gesundheit

So, Jordan+ as a Gn. Priest what is the most embarassing experience you can imagine happening to you?

Okay, I'm a sneezer. Not a polite little "achoo", but more of a full-body, cardiac-defibrulation sound-barrier-threatening event. Once, I was carrying tea and sneezed but didn't go with it because I didn't want to pour hot tea all over myself: I threw my neck out, couldn't move, and had to call an ambulance.

"What is the nature of the medical emergency, sir?"

"I, um, sneezed wrong."

So the worst I can imagine is sneezing during the Eucharist, send the chalice and contents hurtling toward the congregation.

Ask A Gnostic Priest: Gnosticism, "gnosticism", and Satanism Lite™

Why do so many people latch onto the words 'Gnosis' and 'Gnostic' outside of the context of the Gnostic tradition? 

It seems to me that many people generalize the terms to mean "having to do with knowledge," so any sort of esoteric knowledge is "Gnostic" from use of hallucinogens to past lives to "Churches are evil." What claim do these groups have to the Gnostic tradition? What makes our claim any more legitimate?

Gnosis is a pretty general term meaning "immediate, intimate knowledge" as opposed to abstract, theoretical knowledge (episteme); so I think the word is pretty much "up for grabs". You want to use it to describe the experience of Inuit shamans or Orthodox hesychasts, go for it.

Gnosticism, on the other hand, is the specific pre-Christian syncretic movement of the later Hellenic world, fusing Judaism, Greek philosophy, and Alexandrian Hermeticism. Gnosticism is identifiable through a set of common themes; gnosis, emanations/aeons, and the immediacy of Spirit. A "Gnostic" is an individual who identifies with this culturally-specific movement. This is what the term means. Period. As a religion, it is a proper noun, and is always capitalized in the English language.

Some inappropriately use the term "gnosticism" to describe any idea, movement, or expression even obliquely related to "enlightenment" or non-ordinary "peak experience"; this would make all Sufis, Quakers, Shamans, philosophers, Buddhists (and even most psychotics and meth-heads) "gnostic". In other words, this misuse stretches the word so far that it includes almost everything, and is therefore meaningless. It's also insulting to the other traditions which are doing their own thing in their own right: a Lapp Shaman is not a Gnostic anymore than a Sufi is a Lapp Shaman.

Advocates of this malapropism would have you believe that "gnosticism" really means shape-shifting space reptiles and ingesting copious amounts of magic mushrooms. But I can refer to my toaster oven as a water-buffalo to the same effect. You can't stop these people from saying crazy things. But it's not the "craziness" that makes their use of the term illegitimate, it's their rejection of "Gnosticism"; an authentic, historical, verifiable religion. The shroomies have no time for Valentinus or Basilides or the Cathars or the Christian mystics or the Nag Hammadi Library. In fact most of these "gnosticism" advocates think that "Gnosticism" is the antithesis of everything they stand for. Because Gnosticism cares for an ancient tradition of liturgy and scripture and practice and teachings, which of course means dogma, and we all know that's eeeevillll.

Most of the problem stems from the work of cranky second-century heresiologists, who offered up a vision of Gnosticism as "everything the Church doesn't like". Well there were lots of things the Church didn't like that had nothing to do with Gnosticism, but they lumped it all in there. Some people start out from the position that "I don't like the Church, so therefore I must like everything that the Church doesn't like, which makes me a gnostic." This kind of thinking seems to make you crazy pretty quickly. Imagine if modern Jews allowed Joseph Goebbels to continue to define Judaism for them.

This "anti-Catholicism = Gnosticism" argument is disproved by the fact that the identifiable Gnostic writers we have from the classical period are, um, pretty darn churchy. Catholic Saints, some of 'em. And a so-Churchy-he-was-almost-Pope. No anti-church "scratch where it itches" Gnostics in the Classical period. Sorry.

The people who really want "gnosticism" to be this "whatever-floats-your-boat-ism" are advocating a kind of Satanism Lite™: a superficial ego-worshipping event that confuses opening yourself up to the current of Wisdom in the world, and uniting with the Pleroma through Grace with "liberation means I get to do whatever I want".

I can hypnotize you into thinking you're eating chocolate cake: you can taste it and even feel full afterwards. But you didn't really eat cake, did you? Even though your experience told you you did. These experiences really are not the same.

Dr. Elaine Pagels said (as a punk-ass grad student back in '79) that Iranaeus said that Gnostics drew lots to see who got to be bishop for a day. The problem with this is twofold: a) Iranaeus didn't actually say that, and b) it was never true to begin with. So rather a lot of people say "hey, I like this drawing-lots idea, therefore I must be a gnostic" and all they're really doing is enshrining anti-Gnostic propaganda. Well actually a sloppy interpretation of anti-Gnostic propaganda. Even some modern Gnostic churches make this mistake: "Iranaeus said Gnostics believe x, I'm a Gnostic therefore I believe x too." Except that quite often Iranaeus was talking about his own fictional boogey-man, which never existed.

The biggest reason that some individuals and groups use the term Gnosticism is because of its Google-ranking, and they want to insert themselves in the traffic. But that's okay. I once wrote that a Benedictine monk has little in common with a Protestant televangelist. And the monk can't stop the televangelist from declaring that Christianity really means "send me money and I'll cure your cancer"; the monk will just keep pursuing ora et labora, observing the Offices, and doing what he's always done. Freaking out about the televangelist won't help the monk do what he's there to do. Neither should we worry about the Browne-outs, Lash-tilians, and shroomies. "What they are doing is not what we are doing".

Let it go.

Ask A Gnostic Priest

G'head.

Anything.

Pressing theological issues? Burning questions? Stupid questions?

Be warned: odds are I'll link to pre-existing posts, as we've covered a lot of ground here over the last few years. But you might find a new one.

Fire away.

I ♥ Huckabees

I mean, should I keep doing what I'm doing? Is it hopeless?

Mr. Markovski, we see a lot of people in here...who claim they want to know the ultimate truth about reality. They want to peer under the surface at the big everything...but this can be a very painful process full of surprises. It can dismantle the world as you know it. That's why most people prefer to remain on the surface of things.

Maybe you should go home. Let sleeping dogs lie. Take it easy. What do you say?

Friendless Social Networking Whore Posts Pathetic Cry For Help

I did the long-resisted myspace thing, as I kept getting Google alerts for Gnostic blogs on which I couldn't comment as I was not a member. The hard part was de-uglifiying the horrible, horrible css code and reducing the 12 colours, 6 fonts and 7 font sizes into greyscale Helvetica everything. Perhaps I overdid it on the minimalism, but it was truly offensive before.

Anyway, I need me some friends. I get 6,000 readers a month, SOME of you have to be on myspace...?

Remembering Bob Wilson

In 1989 I had this loser "musician" friend whose claim to fame involved writing interesting people and being fortunate enough to have some of them write back. He had quite a collection; PKD's son Christopher, members of Killing Joke, Gary Newman. Trippy fringe people. One of those he "collected" was Bob Wilson, and after many a bong hit my loser "musician" friend decided that the esoteric order to which we both belonged should "produce a tour" which would raise money for said order, and maybe pay some of loser "musician" friend's back rent.

As the only one with a car, I got to pick Bob up from the airport. As the only one with a house, I got to put Bob up for a week. My "commitment" to the "tour" was tested after going out for beers with Bob and the "sponsoring order" that evening by breaking the uncomfortable silence that descended once the cheque appeared. I was the only one with a job, so this is how the rest of the tour went.

Loser musician friend's "producer" efforts extended to booking one small venue and putting up a dozen photocopied posters up in a few bookstores and head shops. After two days of stepping over many an esoteric-order-stoner-loser friend on my living room floor, with Bob as the centre of the universe, Bob did a knock-em-dead presentation at the fifth-full/four-fifths empty venue. The "tour" had lost money from the get go. Bob had initially booked a week off to do signings and presentations, but his flight schedule forced him into a 10 day stay. For which it was instantly obvious he would receive no compensation (and he was out of luck on the plane ticket, too).

I tried to pick up the slack by arranging book signings and media time; but the Reaganista climate of the day was not particularly conducive to a pun-cracking Joyce scholar with a penchant for invoking LSD experiences, alien conspiracies and sex cults. The war was over, the good guys lost. Aside from the University radio station, nobody wanted to interview him – and even then, we were stood up by both engineer and interviewer, so I filled in as both. I'd never run a sound board before so I'm not even convinced we were broadcasting.

Evenings were spent with salons at which Bob shone with wit and stories; he enjoyed these tremendously and wine flowed to an insane degree. Days were spent with him mostly bored out of his skull: he soon realized he was on an island, with day-trips to Vancouver or Seattle being out of anyone's budget. We drove around, lunched, read to each other. He made me a Discordian Pope and bestowed upon me a Haitian Vodou lineage to pass the time more than anything else. We talked literature, philosophy, magic, and the role of pornography. We played chess and rented slasher movies.

The universe conspired to arrange for Dr. Christopher Hyatt to be in town, briefly. Bob and Chris were old friends and partners in crime in orbit around Falcon Press, and Chris's visit re-energized Bob. Their repartee was brilliant, inspired, multi-faceted and sparkling genius. For those brief moments we could all believe again that we were inventing the future; an intellectual utopia of sex and ecstasy and smart drugs and cybernetics dominated by green libertarian transhuman poets, the bastard love-children of William Burroughs and Stephen Hawking.

For those of us born in the 60's, we didn't get a Woodstock. Kerouac was 20 years dead and we had missed the Bus. Personal computers were our Bus. Mondo 2000 was our Howl. Bob Wilson saw the ghost in this machine, saw the Hermetic current snaking caduceae through the networks; the BBSs and FidoNet and the WELL.

Eventually the 10 day, one-event tour came to an end, and Bob returned wincing to my shockless, rusted Jeep and I drove him to the airport. Throughout he was a gentleman, taking in stride that his work reached out to kids and stoners and weirdos who couldn't promote a tour or pay him for his time. He made it clear he appreciated me stepping in and doing my limited best to pick up the peices of my friends' well-intentioned stoner-loserdom.

Maybe a year later I was chatting with Howard Rheingold on the Brainstorms community, and he brought up Bob. I didn't mention the tour fiasco, as I was embarrassed by its failure and generally appalled at the way he had been treated. But of course so many of those ventures failed back then, with even Falcon itself having to rise from its own ashes every now and again. In the media generation that invented famous-for-being-famous, we all lost an enormous opportunity in not giving Bob's work the kind of attention it deserved - not just as psychadelic prankster, but as a student of human nature who provided both a vision and a roadmap to an integral, compassionate future.

Robert Anton Wilson 1932 - 2007

Judas and Mary as Frame Stories:

For "Mary Magdalene, Judas Iscariot, and the Gnostic Roots of Christianity" #60102, Wisdom University, Oakland CA, November 6-10 2006

It seems impossible for us as modern readers to dismiss the millennia of aggregate meaning assigned to the two Gospel characters, Judas and Mary Magdalene. By the middle ages both became synonymous with the very idea of sinfulness; Judas for his betrayal, and Mary for her prostitution. The vilification of these two figures served the purposes of both misogynistic and anti-semitic agendas that were likely unforeseen by the authors of either the canonical or Gnostic Gospels.

And yet centuries before their castigation it is just these two ultimate "outsiders" who prove to be the "insiders" in their own Gospels:

Knowing that Judas was reflecting upon something that was exalted, Jesus said to him, “Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom. It is possible for you to reach it, but you will grieve a great deal." – Gospel of Judas 36

Peter said to Mary, "Sister we know that the Savior loved you more than the rest of woman. Tell us the words of the Savior which you remember which you know, but we do not, nor have we heard them." – Gospel of Mary 5, 6

Both are privy to the next stage of initiatic teachings of Christ. This presentation casts Christianity in the light of an ancient Mystery School, with Judas and Mary portrayed as possessing higher degrees of initiation. This model was extremely common in the ancient world.

Myth and ritual had generally developed separately in the Greek and Roman world: pagan critics and philosophers could thus belittle the gods of myth and poetry without upsetting the continuing practice of cult. When Christian authors borrowed their examples, their polemic was no more effective. Literal myth was irrelevant to practice and its credit was preserved by seeing it as an allegory, whose oddities concealed deeper truths. – Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 1989, p.93

It does appear that both Gospels are depicted in this light: "allegory, whose oddities concealed deeper truths."

Origins

Both Gospels are likely mid-second century texts: The title "Gospel of Judas" is cited by Iranaeus c. 190 [adv. Haer. I 31.1: "certain Gnostic sectaries possessed in addition to other works of their own composition a 'gospel' under the name of the traitor Judas."], but it is unclear if he is referring to the same document we now possess by that name. These Gospels are the product of Sethian Gnosticism, a pre-Christian movement typified by rich and complex cosmogenies which syncretize both platonism and Jewish imagery.

"Now, these Sethians proudly derive their ancestry from Seth the son of Adam and honor him and attribute to him whatever belongs to excellence and righteousness and the like. They even do not stop short of calling him the Christ and insist that he was Jesus." – St. Epiphanius of Salamis, Against Heresies, Chapter 39.1.3

The most complete version of the Gospel of Mary is from the Papyrus Berolinensus 8502, a codex acquired in 1896 by Dr. Carl Reinhardt. Also included in this codex is a copy of the Apocryphon of John, which I hope will prove significant in examining Judas and Mary.

The Gospel of Judas is found in the notorious Codex Tchacos, discovered sometime between 1950 and 1970 near Muhafazat Al Minya in Egypt and stolen, smuggled, and peddled throughout grey market antiquities circles until the beginning of this century. An English language translation was released by the National Geographic Society amidst much scandal and controversy in April of 2006.

The Frame Stories

Mary and Judas are familiar characters from what we have long culturally accepted as factual accounts of events. But ultimately, both of their Gospels are frame stories, like the Decameron, Canterbury Tales or Ovid's Metamorphoses: narrative trajectories enveloping very different contents, and returning to the over-arching narrative voice. Both Judas and Mary resolve with a declaration of authority: What has just been revealed, however challenging, is correct. What is framed by both of these Gospel narratives is the cosmogeny of Sethian Gnosticism, as exemplified by the Apocryphon of John. This is a distinctive story about the journey of mind in the world; rich in complexity, elegantly sophisticaticated, admittedly opaque.

The Apocryphon of John contains "the teaching of the savior, and the revelation of the mysteries and the things hidden in silence, even these things which he taught John, his disciple." In "The Apocryphon of John: Part II of the Gospel of John?" Karen King suggests that the Sethians regarded the Apocryphon as the second part of the Johannine Gospel. The Apocryphon offers an elaborate spiritual vision of a complex series of emanations, or aspects of the divine. Its import in Gnostic circles is suggested by its being the first text in each of the three Nag Hammadi codices in which it is found.

In The Gnostic Bible, Marvin Meyer explores the thrust of Sethian cosmogeny;

"Greek psychology and philosophy (platonism, for example) posited a system in which the mind is linked to the divine and the divine is said to be the mind. Accordingly, the Secret Book of John employs a series of Greek terms related to the word mind (nous) in order to describe the career of the divine and the creation of the cosmos. The account describes the invisible spirit or mind extending itself through a thought (ennoia), a forethought (pronoia), until it achieves an enlightened state of mind (nous) and a spiritual fullness (pleroma). Alas, a loss of wisdom (Sophia) brings about mindlessness (aponoia); the restoration of wisdom is finally accomplished through the expression of divine afterthought (epinoia)." – 2003, p.136

Mary, Mary, Fragmentary

The challenge in conducting a direct comparison between Judas and Mary is that so much of Mary is incomplete. The first six pages are completely missing, as are pages 11 to 14, which we can assume deals with the crux of the "inner teachings" of Sethian cosmological material. But still we can see this theme of the progress of mind negotiating with certain forces; desire, ignorance, temptation, impermanence, anger. It is the trajectory of individuation, of the maturation of the soul.

Compare this excerpt from Mary;

When the soul had overcome the third power, it went upwards and saw the fourth power, which took seven forms.

The first form is darkness, the second desire, the third ignorance, the fourth is the excitement of death, the fifth is the kingdom of the flesh, the sixth is the foolish wisdom of flesh, the seventh is the wrathful wisdom. These are the seven powers of wrath.

They asked the soul, Whence do you come slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?

The soul answered and said, What binds me has been slain, and what turns me about has been overcome, and my desire has been ended, and ignorance has died – Gospel of Mary 8:18-22

with this excerpt from Judas;

“And a luminous cloud appeared there. He said, ‘Let an angel come into being as my
attendant.’

“A great angel, the enlightened divine Self-Generated, emerged from the cloud.
Because of him, four other angels came into being from another cloud, and they became
attendants for the angelic Self-Generated. The Self-Generated said, [48] ‘Let [...] come
into being [...],’ and it came into being [...]. And he [created] the first luminary to reign
over him. He said, ‘Let angels come into being to serve [him],’ and myriads without
number came into being. He said, ‘[Let] an enlightened aeon come into being,’ and he
came into being. He created the second luminary [to] reign over him, together with
myriads of angels without number, to offer service. That is how he created the rest of the
enlightened aeons. He made them reign over them, and he created for them myriads of angels without number, to assist them. – Judas 48

These appear to reference:

"[She] requested from the invisible, virginal Spirit - that is Barbelo - to give her foreknowledge. And the Spirit consented. And when he had consented, the foreknowledge came forth, and it stood by the forethought; it originates from the thought of the invisible, virginal Spirit. It glorified him and his perfect power, Barbelo, for it was for her sake that it had come into being.

"And she requested again to grant her indestructibility, and he consented. When he had consented, indestructibility came forth, and it stood by the thought and the foreknowledge. It glorified the invisible One and Barbelo, the one for whose sake they had come into being.

"And Barbelo requested to grant her eternal life. And the invisible Spirit consented. And when he had consented, eternal life came forth, and they attended and glorified the invisible Spirit and Barbelo, the one for whose sake they had come into being.

"And she requested again to grant her truth. And the invisible Spirit consented. And when he had consented, truth came forth, and they attended and glorified the invisible, excellent Spirit and his Barbelo, the one for whose sake they had come into being.

"This is the pentad of the aeons of the Father, which is the first man, the image of the invisible Spirit; it is the forethought, which Barbelo, and the thought, and the foreknowledge, and the indestructibility, and the eternal life, and the truth. This is the androgynous pentad of the aeons, which is the decad of the aeons, which is the Father. – Apocryphon of John

In all three, we see the theme of a progression of emanations of archetypes. It is this structure which the initiate must ultimately confront and understand in order to spiritually mature.

Finally, both the Gospels conclude with an affirmation of authority;

Look, you have been told everything. Lift up your eyes and look at the cloud and the light within it and the stars surrounding it. The star that leads the way is your star.” – Judas 57


He questioned them about the Savior: Did He really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did He prefer her to us?

Then Mary wept and said to Peter, My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I have thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Savior?

Levi answered and said to Peter, Peter you have always been hot tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well. – Mary 9:4-8

Personal Reflection:

Mary as consort and inner initiate; Judas as confidante and pivotal figure in the Salvation of the world: a revisionism establishing balance and deliberation, superimposed over the untidy chaos of historical events. In true Gnostic fashion, these Gospels do not explore what happened so much as what is happening; not the events per se but rather their meaning and import to the reader. They have an immediacy and intimacy, as they were created to speak to the heart, and I believe never intended as objective chronicle.

Jesus takes us aside, and shows us that the universe is the result of a "flowing out" of God, layer upon layer, just as our own journey reflects an extension of mind through the course of our individuation.

While the Gospel of Mary is Sethian in content it seems to more Thomasine or Valentinian in narrative, but that is likely an accident of translation. I can only hope that a more intact version is out there, waiting to be unearthed and analyzed in a hopefully more collaborative environment than was The Gospel of Judas.


Bibliography

Barnstone, William and Meyer, Marvin, The Gnostic Bible. Boston: Shambhala, 2003

Lane Fox, Robin, Pagans and Christians. New York: Knopf, 1986

Layton, Bentley, The Gnostic Scriptures. New York: Doubleday, 1987

Robinson, James M. (Ed.), The Nag Hammadi Library. New York: Harper and Row, 1988

Robinson, James M, The Secrets of Judas. San Francisco, Harper San Francisco, 2006

“Alternative to . . .”

The cornerstone of identity of any community of protest (“alternative”) is the original community. This forces the “alternative” into a corner – for every statement that the original issues explaining or establishing a particular position, the “alternative” community must either counter it, or accept it. The natural result here is that the entire theological programme of the “alternative” community is built upon its response to or reaction against the positions of another faith community. [...]

Today, I am really uncomfortable with the realisation that I was promoting my tradition, my community, not for positive but rather for negative reasons. “You’re gay/ a woman/ divorced/ like green hair, join us, you’re welcome here – whereas [insert your favourite Christian-ism here] rejects you we do not.” What did I have to offer these people other than “we’re NOT them”? Yes, it is the case that I worked hard to provide them with good pastoral care. Yes it is the case that we did do our own thing with little regard for what the “big-tent” churches were doing. But still it is the case that rather than promoting a positively constructed identity and theology, at one time I reached out to people because they were reacting against the vision and values of their “home” church.

The result of my folly is easy to see. When, for example, I moved from one city to another; the community built in the first place collapsed shortly thereafter. If, I were to be away, for a couple of weeks, the community would refuse to meet. The most telling thing for me was that participants would never seek chrismation, the defining moment of saying “this” is my church. Instead when they would talk to others about their faith life, they would say things like: ‘I go to Fr. Alexis’ church’; rather than, ‘I’m a member of Ss. Cyril & Methodius – we’re an OC/IC community.”

Presenting our communities as an “alternative” to another body of faith is to build our identity on another’s foundation. Moreover, when presenting ourselves as an “alternative to [insert your favourite Christian-ism here]” and the positions that community holds which we find objectionable, puts us on a shifting footing which lacks integrity. Every time the boundaries of the issue shift – so too must the theology and reaction of the “alternative” community. This is not a house built on rock – rather it is a house built on sand; and anyone who has been a consistent observer of the OC/IC/ISM [Old Catholic/Independent Catholic/Independent Sacramental Movement] community over the course of the past decade can easily point to any number of groups that have had to literally “re-invent” themselves when the issues changed, and the borders shifted.


– Alexis Tancibok, Grace Catholic

No Service Sunday January 7th

There will be no Service tomorrow, as I'm a bit under the weather. Nothing serious, just don't want to germify the lot of you.

Shalom.

Johannite "Elevator Speech"

"What's a Jo... Johh... um..."

"YO-hunn-ite"

"Yeah, what's that?"

"The Johannite Tradition begins with John the Baptist, and draws inspiration from the Gospel of John which emphasizes the divinity of Christ – about the spiritual experience of awakening the Christ within– over the philosophy or history of Jesus. The Templars and the medieval French Cathars were Johannites. It looks very Catholic on the outside, but it's actually very Buddhist on the inside."

[Thanks to Morgan for the question]

Gospel of Truth

Speak the truth to those who seek it,
And speak of understanding to those who have committed sin through error;
Strengthen the feet of those who have stumbled;
Extend your hands to those who are sick;
Feed those who are hungry;
Give rest to those who are weary;
And raise up those who wish to rise.


– Pagels translation


Speak concerning the truth to those who seek it and of knowledge to those who, in their error, have committed sin. Make sure-footed those who stumble and stretch forth your hands to the sick. Nourish the hungry and set at ease those who are troubled. Foster men who love. Raise up and awaken those who sleep.


– Grant translation

[Zuchetto tip to Michael for the Pagels.]

The Book of John the Baptist

John proclaims in the nights and says:


Through my Father's discourses I give light and through the praise of the Man, my creator. I have freed my soul from the world and from the works that are hateful and wrong. The Seven (rulers/planetary spirits) put question to me, the Dead who have not seen Life, and they said unto me; "In whose strength dost thou stand there, and with whose praise dost thou make proclamation?"


Thereupon gave to them answer: I stand in the strength of my Father and with the praise of the Man, my creator. I have built no house in Judea, I have set up no throne in Jerusalem. I have not loved the wreath of the roses, not commerce with lovely women. I have not loved the deficiency , not loved the cup of the drunkards. I have loved no food of the body, and envy has found no place in me. I have not forgotten my night-prayer, not forgotten the wondrous Jordan. I have not forgotten my baptizing, not forgotten my pure sign. I have not forgotten Sun-day, and the Day`s evening has not condemned me. I have not forgotten Shilmai and Nidbai, who dwell in the House of the Mighty. They clear me and let me ascend; they know no fault, no defect in me.



When John said this, Life rejoiced over him greatly. The Seven sent him their greeting and the Twelve made obeisance before him. They said to him: "Of all these words, which thou hast spoken, thou hast not said a single one falsely. Delightful and fair is thy voice, and none is equal to thee. Fair is thy discourse in thy mouth and precious is thy speech, which has been bestowed upon thee. The vesture which First Life did give unto Adam, the Man, the vesture which First Life did give unto Râm, the Man, the vesture which First Life did give unto Shurbai, the Man, the vesture First Life did give unto Shem,son of Noah has He given now unto thee. He hath given it thee, O John, that thou mayest ascend, and with thee may those descend.


– The Book of John the Baptist

Interviewed by Rev. Max

12. On a similar note, what can people get out of reading the NHL texts who aren’t involved in the organized pursuit of gnosis? What are the pitfalls of pursuing gnosis on your own, outside of an organization? What are the benefits? Where might so-called independent and creative Gnostics of the PKD/Blake camp fit into the scheme of the larger Gnostic movement as you see it, outside of organizations? Is there are role for these sorts of people in modern Gnosticism or do they represent more of a liability? Can you achieve gnosis outside of organized Gnosticism? Should you try? How much of gnosis is a manifestation of the trickster impulse and how much should be focused on building lasting institutions?

JS+: The NHL can be read as inspirational poetry. Reflecting on that, incorporating that meaningfully, and putting that into practice: NONE of that requires a Church. But there is value in community, in liturgy, in honouring collectively the passage of the liturgical year and the sacramental cycles of one’s life; birth, adulthood, marriage, death, acknowledging your mistakes and nourishing the mythic self. So the Gnostic Churches enable people to celebrate these cycles in a Gnostic context. There’s no aspiration to exclusivity at all, and there’s no “liability” in those who find comfort and meaning outside the Church in a more monastic setting, even if that’s on the bus or in their living room. We need to learn from each other’s journey, and that’s harder to do if we view those who respond to community or those who respond to isolation as a “liability”.

Your latter point is very important; it must be understood that anyone can experience gnosis either inside or outside of any religion. GnosticISM is unique in that it does not purport to grant enlightenment, but creates a safe space to celebrate and honour it once it occurs. Gnosis in and of itself is not a manifestation of the trickster archetype and neither does it have anything to do with institutionalism per se. That does not mean that an institution cannot grow and develop in order to serve those whose gnosis has led them to contribute and participate. To boil water, you put it in a pot. To perform magic, you cast a circle. To cross the deep waters, you get in a boat. That’s all a Church is.

13. Now is a very exciting time to be a Gnostic - the mandarins of popular culture really seems to be pushing VERY hard to get Gnostic ideas accepted on a mass level. Since my own interest and/or involvement in online Gnosticism began I’ve seen multiple Time and Newsweek cover stories about Gnosticism, the Matrix, the Da Vinci Code, etc. Do you perceive this push too? What (or who) do you think is behind it? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Why? What misconceptions do you have to battle most frequently? What do you wish people understood about Gnosticism that they seem not to? What do you think of self-proclaimed “Gnostic” new age psychic channellers like Sylvia Brown and J.Z. Knight?

JS+: Imagine if a fifth of all North Americans had heard their cats speak English. This is disorienting, as it’s impossible; our modernist world view doesn’t account for it, our churches have no place to put this experience. Such is gnosis. I think in an earlier, less critical age, gnosis was allowed to flow and there was enough mystery and dark corners of the world in which these experiences could crystalize and find expression. Now there’s so much information, we’re pushing Wisdom out of the wilderness in an often jarring confrontation, like bears in a new suburb.

Brown and Knight and their followers just seem to be groping in the darkness –as we all are–, and using the label “Gnosticism” for its Google ranking. A consumer culture, hungry for religious experience, expects to buy it. It’s a natural part of the consumer ecosystem for someone to insert themselves between the consumer and the flow of money. I’m lonely, I want sex, here’s my VISA. I’m an exiled Spark of God, I yearn for reunion with the Pleroma, here’s my MasterCard. Brown and Knight are inevitabilities, and there will be more of them.

14. Do you have any advice for people trying to find their spiritual path? Any parting words of wisdom? If you could summarize the absolute most important things you’ve learned about the human spirit to a paragraph or two (less or more if you prefer - it’s important!) what would you say?

JS+: “It’s the praxis.” Mindfulness constantly, centering prayer daily, lectio divina weekly. Join your local art gallery. Write something. Paint something. Donate blood. Hand a homeless person a pair of clean socks and a toothbrush. Vote. Give all your paperbacks to charity. Drink and make love and sleep in and play with your dog. The Secret Book of James says “Hearken to the Logos, understand gnosis, love life.” I can’t top that.


– Enemies.com

Christmas Eve Mass at Home

We decided to do a more intimate gathering for last Mass, and Z suggested we host it in our home. So this is the altar prepared for the Eucharist in our dining room. Preparing, my thoughts turned to those who in the past risked their lives for such gatherings, either under Nero or the Inquisition or Protestant regimes; this simple prayer and simple meal so powerful and threatening that it meant death for those who partook.

In a less dangerous time, we scant dozen met beside the fire in the dining room, mindful of the attention span of children vibrating from pre-Christmas excitement.

Christmas blessings to all of you who keep me at this blog, and those of you whom I've come to know better because of it; Juliana, Jesse, Pauline, Doug, Coe, Chris, Joe, Shawn, Stu, Shaun, Sherril, Morgan, Roger, Michael, Jeremy, Terje, Marsha, Scott, all you Anonymouses, Max, Ken, and my mysterious readers in Finland and Mauritius and Costa Rica and Belgium.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Drivers

Sometimes when I walk down the hill to the strip mall beside the Rez, I walk back up facing oncoming traffic, and I see the framed faces of the drivers.

Time. Slows.

I see the space around their eyes, the lines from wincing, from straining to stay awake. I see the lines around their mouths, the set of their jaws. I see the tension in their shoulders, the chemicals in their hair.

I see the chinks in their armour. I see the paycheque stubs in their purses, the dangling crap on their keychains. World's Best Mom. The nicotine stains on their fingernails. I see the pending gas and electic bills, lighters lost and found, the fortune cookie strip down the back of vinyl upholstery.

I see the small comforts they take and give. I see their lostness, and the hundred effortless little kindnesses. I see the dreamcatchers and bah-gua and rosaries that hang from rear-view mirrors. St. Christopher, protector of travellers.

There is one-sixteenth of a tank of gas in the car.

They get out of bed and worry about their parents. Brush their teeth and think they're looking old. Remember lovers from high-school. Forgive them their trespasses. And they drive down the hill toward me, courageous or oblivious or nonchalant or pre-occupied. There is an irritating co-worker, soccer practice, groceries, dinner, a half-remembered dream, a forgotten face, I wonder what ever happened to her? And prescriptions and vet bills and low-carb snack bars and radio advertising and they're driving down the hill toward me with hopeless, pointless beauty.

And I am crushed by the goddamn heroism of it.

The Mass of the Incarnation and the Alchemy of the Eucharist

Who are we, and why are we here?

This is what the Mass answers; what gnosis understands. Who we are are Sparks of the Infinite Light, the Sacred Flame; lost fragments of God. What we are doing here is the process of theosis, of becoming God again through release, redemption, eleutherion.

We want to change, to grow – as does everything. The acorn wills to become the oak, the caterpillar the butterfly, the infant the adolescent, the adolescent the adult. We all of us will theosis. Transformation is the natural order of things: But we do have a habit, we errant stars, of getting in our own way.

So the first thing any good Alchemist does is get her ducks in a row, and sorts out the elements. Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. In the Eucharist we have the host, incense, candles, and wine and the invocations of the four elemental Archangels to do this (Raphael, Michael, Gabriel, Uriel). But we need to concentrate the animating force, the Quintessence which is the Holy Spirit, to give the elements life and meaning.

What this means for each of us is that we need to successfully negotiate between the elemental forces acting upon human experience: the physical, the intellectual, the willful, and the emotional. If these forces are in conflict, it's harder to hear the voice of that Quintessential Spirit. Step one is to sort them out, set them aside, examine and honour them and find some equilibrium.

The uninhabited host is not a "commemorative meal", it's just a cracker. Our aim is to trans-sub-stant-iate (across-under-standing-ify) the host by imbuing it with this Fifth Element. We do this through poetry, through ritual psychodrama, through gesture, through music and silence, through myth and beauty. This is how all good transformations are undertaken; how curiosity becomes love, how love becomes life.

This is a real and magical event, and we accomplish it with the words "hocus pocus" (hoc est enim corpus meum, for this is my body).

This pushes the "root", (hypostasis = underlying reality), of the host sideways from the material realm into the mythic realm, so that it can become nourishment for our mythic selves: The Infinite becomes finite, so that the finite may become again Infinite. Solve et Coagula. As above, so below.

And this is the miracle of the Mass.

It is also the miracle of Christmas: the Feast of the Nativity, of Incarnation. Of the Word becoming flesh, of the Infinite becoming finite. The abiding, eternal mystery, here at our fingertips; that we have the capacity for limitless love, transcendent creativity, immortal compassion.

And we are all of the persons in this story; we are the Holy Family, struggling in the urgent wild to give laboured birth to the Infant Sun, so fragile in these first solstice hours. We are the Magi, the alchemists, drawn in kinship to an errant star that we may be fully present to receive the Logos. And of course we are the Child, an immortal, perfect spark, glittering in the trash stratum of the world, welcomed not with a coronation but with blood and tears and the cries of childbirth, the substance of a world giving birth to something greater than it can contain.

And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail,
Rose-red with beatings in it, as if alive,
Till all the white walls of my cell were dyed
With rosy colours leaping on the wall;
And then the music faded, and the Grail
Past, and the beam decayed, and from the walls
The rosy quiverings died into the night.

So now the Holy Thing is here again
Among us, brother, fast thou too and pray,
And tell thy brother knights to fast and pray,
That so perchance the vision may be seen
By thee and those, and all the world be healed.'

Christmas Eve Mass will be held at our home instead of the Church, Sunday at 2 PM.

Here... Comes... the Sun... King

Here comes the Sun... doot n doo doo...

We may not know of the War of the Trees; that the Oak King has overthrown the summer-crowned Holly King in the Winter Palace. We may not know that the Word has fallen to earth, changing the world forever and bringing the Promethean fire of gnosis with which to light our way Home. We may not know of the bull-slayer, of his birth in a cave and the turning of the wheel of the stars.

But we do know, all of us – somehow we know – that the Light is among us now, and in this hour we are blessed.

Just Say Gno

©Tatsuya Ishida, Sinfest.net

Edward Gnostichands

"Well, a long time ago, an inventor lived in that mansion. He made many things, I suppose. He also created a man. He gave him inside, a heart, a brain, everything. Well, almost everything. You see, the inventor was very old. He died before he got to finish the man he invented. So the man was left by himself, incomplete and all alone."

"He didn't have a name?"

"Of course, he had a name. His name was Edward."

•••

PEG: Oh my! What happened to you?

EDWARD: I'm not finished.

•••

"How do you know he's still alive?"

"I don't know. Not for sure. But I believe he is. You see, before he came down here, it never snowed. And afterwards it did. If he weren't up there now, I don't think it would be snowing. Sometimes you can still catch me dancing in it."

I Am a Magnet For All Kinds of Deeper Wonderment

I spent the morning watching Narnia with my children. I don't care what your take on Christianity is – Aslan's self-sacrifice on behalf of the snotty and undeserving Edmund is a profoundly moving moral tale.

CS Lewis, who despite his reputation for being Anglican Ubergenius was actually pretty lightweight intellectually and philosophically, put the Christian challenge of faith in terms of Lucy's account through the wardrobe thusly: she was either telling the objective truth, or she was lying, or she was crazy. This unfortunately has coloured many Christians' explanation of their own faith; either Jesus was exactly who "he said he was" i.e. an historically accurate word-for-word inarguable reality of unblemished scripture, or he was a vile cult-generating con artist, or he was a lunatic - thus rendering all Christianity and all Christians to the looney bin of history.

To my mind, this discounts the subjective reality of mysticism. Most spiritually inclined people I know have had something happen to them that "didn't happen", or seen things that weren't there to be seen. A deceased relative come to say goodbye, faeries at the bottom of the garden, a wide-awake in person conversation with St. Francis of Assisi. These subjective realities can only be filed under "crazy" according to the tidy modernist 3-slot reality above.

But the poets, the mystics, leave room for such experiences. Every shamanic journey, while inward and objectively unverifiable, is still "real" in that it informs the character and bears fruit in the outer person. Lucid dreams, "reincarnation flashbacks", out of body experiences need not to happen in front of witnesses and cameras in order to transform, humble, and encourage. There is a "sideways" dimension in human experience which is just as valid, and we're wise to remember that in the hero's journey, "vision" is as real as "evidence".

At the end of Narnia there's a wonderful gem of an anthem by Alanis Morissette, that speaks to the Gnostic themes of exile and the journey to theosis.

Oh perilous place
Walk backwards toward you
Blink disbelieving eyes

Chilled to the bone
Most visibly brave
No apprehended bloom
First to take this foot to virgin snow

Oh ominous place
Spellbound and un-childproofed
My least favorite chill to bear alone

Compatriots in place
They’d cringe if I told you
Our best back pocket secret: our bond full blown

I am a magnet for all kinds of deeper wonderment
I am a wunderkind
I am a Joan of Arc and smart enough to believe this
I am a princess on the way to my throne

Destined to reign, destined to roam

St. Gerasimos Parish, Apostolic Johannite Church, State College PA

The newly-founded Gnostic parish of the Apostolic Johannite Church, Parish of St. Gerasimos, State College Pennsylvania, will be performing liturgy for the first time today. St. Gerasimos was a 16th century monk who preached ""Children, live in peace and do not be arrogant".

Many blessings and well wishes to Bishop Dr. +William Behun and those whom the new parish will serve.

חֲנֻכָּה

Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha-olam, asher kid-shanu b' mitzvotav, ve-tsivanu le-hadlik nair shel Hannukah.

Blessed are You, Adonai, our God and Ruler of the World, Who hallows us with mitzvot and commands us to light the lights of Hannukah 

Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha-olim, she-asa nisim la-avotainu bayamim hahem bazman haze.


Blessed are You, Adonai, our God and Ruler of the World, Who performed miracles for our ancestors in ancient times, at this season.

The miracle of Hanukka is the miracle of time, of margin. Breathing room, extra days, extra hours, where none should practically be, where none are even deserved. I know of more than one much needed miracle of extra time right now, and to these I send my thoughts and prayers.

שָׁלוֹם

The Three Scariest Words

Another Exercise: Pick the three words from the list with which you are the most uncomfortable, and click on them to find out what they actually mean.

1. Obey
   
   
2. Soul
   
   
3. Spirit
   
   
4. Dogma
   
   
5. Orthodox
   
   
6. Authority
   
   
7. God
   
   
8. Angel
   
   
9. Apostle
   
   
10. Heresy
    
    
11. Church
    
    
12. Magic

Actually the scariest word related to any of this stuff is actually "Blessing" which means to ritually spatter with blood. But it is interesting to note that "God" is gender-neutral, that to "obey" means "to listen", that "heresy" just means the ability to choose rather than to accept unconditionally, and that "magic" means "of the learned and priestly class" and is therefore in this context indistinguishable from theology.

Pope For A Day

Okay, here's an exercise. You get to be the Pontiff of Rome for a day, and implement 5 changes. You can "bend" the Roman Catholic Church, but you cannot "break" it (i.e. no converting to Buddhism or doing something so out-there you'd lose 100 million Catholics or so). We're talking liturgical reform, declarations and policy changes here.

I think this will lead to some interesting questions about why non-RCs obsess over the gravity-well of the RCC, about why those policies/practices are there in the first place. Here are my five:

1. Female and Married Diaconate: Yes I know there are many married Deacons in the RCC, but I'm talking about freedom to marry after ordination. I think this would revitalize the Order, and shoulder some of the burden due to a shortage of priests. I'd table the issue of priestly celibacy for 50 years or so, so this move is a bit of a dodge from the hard liners on either side of the debate. If there's no celibacy requirement, then women called to the diaconate wouldn't be giving up baby-making, and the biggest deal in the RCC is that it's all about the babies. So it's a bend, not the "break" that priestly ordination of women would be.
   
   
2. Restore the Tridentine Mass: It's big, it's Latin, it's gorgeous – it's important. And yes this does mean a) more religious education so people can understand what is going on up there, and b) and end to the Novus Ordo, Barney and guitars in church, forever. Turn the priest around so that everyone is praying in the same direction and the priest can be seen to be speaking FOR the congregation and not TO them. Communion in the mouth, not the hand: This just makes it all the more challenging, as it's the clerical equivalent of "pin the tail on the donkey", but it's more intimate. Basically I'm advocating the Time Machine Mass here.
   
   
3. Latin, Latin, Latin: One administrative language for the Church, so everyone knows what's going on. Vernacular proved a disastrous experiment: besides, Latin is just so wildly lustful and pagan and the world needs more of it.
   
   
4. Hang out with Bartholemew: The guy clearly has something going on, and he'd be a great afternoon with a few bottles of wine. Are those serpents on top of that tau staff? Whoa.
   
   
5. Give back the goodies: Old Torah scrolls to the Jews, codices to the Aztecs, et cetera: Empty out the basement, basically, with apologies. This would obviously take more than a day, but you could certainly make a policy decision. This one would actually be the biggest "bend", as empowering people with their non-Catholic heritage does not come without significant risk, so perhaps it breaks the rules?

Your turn.

William S. Burroughs: 20th Century Gnostic Visionary

In 1984, in Boulder, Colorado, an interviewer asked William S. Burroughs (1914-1997), “What religious persuasion would you consider yourself?” Without hesitating, Burroughs replied, “Gnostic, or a Manichean.”

Burroughs’s vision of a Utopian autonomous zone could be seen as a metaphor for the Gnostic concept of “the pneuma,” an infinitesimally small fragment of the divine that exists in all human beings. [...]

In Burroughs’s world, evil disguises itself as good and good disguises itself as evil. The Archons are Christians and politicians and “jus’ good folk.” The Gnostics are roving bands of criminals and thieves known only to themselves as “the Johnsons.” The visionaries, the ones who have attained genuine gnosis (i.e., “knowledge”) can see through the illusions forged by control, identify the face of the enemy, and from that point begin the quest for true freedom.

These visionaries regularly employ unorthodox and seemingly “insane” methods to overthrow the hypnotic bonds of control: opiates, orgone energy, tape recorders that are used to cut up, analyse, and reconfigure the endless barrage of shallow mass media used to keep the masses docile, astral travel through time and space, hermetic magic, telepathy, etc. These are the tools of the twentieth century Gnostic in Burroughs’s revitalised Libertatia.

The goal of these latter day Gnostics is to establish an autonomous zone, a physical approximation of the pneuma, while having as much fun as possible trying to “wise up the marks,” a paraphrase of a key sentence in the third chapter of his 1964 novel Nova Express: “And you can see the marks are wising up, standing around in sullen groups and that mutter gets louder and louder.”

The Archons are represented on Earth by parasite-infected control-freaks Burroughs aptly calls “the shits”: “…my contention is that evil is quite literally a virus parasite occupying a certain brain area which we may term the RIGHT centre. The mark of a basic shit is that he has to be right.” The shits will use all the power they have on this planet in order to prevent the Johnsons from waking up the marks.


–Robert Guffey

The Mysterious Smell of Roses

It seems to me that the only true Christians were (are?) the Gnostics, who believe in self-knowledge, i.e., becoming Christ themselves, reaching the Christ within. The Light is the Truth. All any of us are trying to do is precisely that: Turn on the Light.


– John Lennon

The Gospel Truth

Why some old books are stirring up a new debate about the meaning of Jesus
By Jay Tolson

America has a particularly strong case of the Gnostic bug, Wright asserts, because "the default position of American religion is discovering who you really are, as opposed to being saved by grace, which reaches you from somewhere else."

... And if Gnostics were really such proto-feminists, why, he asks, does the Gospel of Thomas have Jesus saying of Mary Magdalene, "Look, I shall guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males"?

[Maybe Wright should read this blog?]

... Gnostic defenders argue that not all Gnostics were extreme dualists who reviled the physical, and this may well be true. Certainly, many modern-day Gnostics embrace the physical, within limits. Talking about such matters with Jordan Stratford, a Gnostic priest who heads a small congregation in Victoria, British Columbia, is a little like talking to a Buddhist: The body can be a distraction, he suggests, but it isn't evil. Speaking more broadly about Gnostic principles and teachings, Stratford says there are many to which he would not subscribe, at least not in any literal sense. The difficulty –for some, the attraction– of Gnostic teachings is that they were formulated in highly symbolic terms, allowing multiple interpretations. "It drives me nuts when people talk about the Gospel of Judas [which depicts Judas as Jesus's most valued disciple] as though it were a chronicle," he says. "This is not a chronicle. It uses characters as metaphors for a spiritual teaching."

Theological comfort zone. But can there really be any reconciliation of those who believe that salvation comes from the outside, through the redemptive act of a divine savior, with those who believe that it comes through self-knowledge? Such a difference, Johnson, Wright, and other traditionalists argue, cannot be explained away by scholars like Pagels as merely politically motivated differences. The distinctions reflect profound theological and anthropological convictions about human nature and its relation to the divine.

The core Christian teaching is wrong, Wright insists, if the Gnostics are right. "In other words," he says, "you are not the spark of light; you are part of the problem. And if you look deep within your heart, and you are true to what's deep within your heart, then you will actually mislead yourself and others that you drag down with you."

The Gnostic perspective is unlikely to wither even under such forceful attacks. Its defenders, past and present, inevitably intellectuals like those second-century, Greek-speaking eggheads, are always ready with a quick "Yes, but." "This is an exciting time to be a scholar," says Marvin Meyer. "There are now so many new approaches and possibilities and ways of putting things together that they allow people to find out where their theological comfort zone is." The Gnostic claim that the truth lies within fuels an argument so deep and old –and indeed so fundamental to who we think we are– that it is hardly surprising that it finds expression in our contemporary culture wars. And unlikely that it will cease doing so in the culture wars to come.


– US News & World Report

Thoughts on this to follow after I've read it a few times. What leaps out at me is Wright's assertion that "if you look deep within your heart, and you are true to what's deep within your heart, then you will actually mislead yourself and others that you drag down with you." Wright is saying here that Christianity asserts that what is in your heart is wrong and evil, and technically yes, this is what Christianity teaches.

This has not always been the assumption in Christianity: it was the debate between Pelagius and Augustine in the fifth century that decided it. Pelagius said that humanity was essentially blessed and good, Augustine – world-hating ex-Manichaean dualist that he was – said we were all essentially cursed and wretched. Augustine won the smackdown, and Christianity went the "cursed and wretched" route thenceforth.

More to come.