Introduction to the Gnostic Creation Myth

Then we dove into a summary introduction to the Gnostic myth of creation, something we’ve been promising to do for a few months now!

[freighttrainwatkins]

While I understand and appreciate your opposition to Gnostic teachings, I cannot help but applaud you for trying to explain it for your audience. I identify as a Gnostic, and am elbow I deep in a study of the medieval sect of Catharism who were heavily influenced by Gnostic thought. As a result of the Albigensian Crusade almost all of the information we have comes from the records of the Inquisition! Gnostic theo-cosmology is indeed complicated in most sources (Iranaeus as well as modern writers make it way more convoluted than it needs to be) but it does resolve an awful lot of questions regarding the nature of God and our relationship to him. In contrast to 'mainstream' Christianity, it certainly appears 'demonic' but I don't see that as being the purpose or intent; rather it was simply an alternate way of interpreting the Human Condition. Thank you for your talks, and even if I'm in a different part of faith in God I encourage you to keep up your good work in trying to help others (including myself) on the straight and narrow.

[Corina-dqmy]

When I tried to explain in a nutshell, what gnostics believe, to my sister, I had never felt so crazy in my life. It's absolutely absurd when you actually get down to what it is in a few minutes or less. Try saying it out loud. It is absolutely wild.

[polemeros]

As Jorge Luis Borges wrote in his 1932 preface to their mythologies,  The Defense Of Basilides The False:“The Gnostics were vanquished in their battle with the Christians.
But we can imagine their possible victory. If Alexandria had triumphed
instead of Rome, the bizarre and confused stories that I summarize here
would be coherent, ordinary, majestic”.

[aortaplatinum]

The idea of the Aeons being sort of ripples outward, or offspring, a game of telephone that morphs and changes each time it gets further from The One, is so interesting and a great way to explain it.
And the further idea of these offspring being created through interaction with each other, feels like a primordial form of human art- one person creates a work, and then another person sees that work and is inspired by it, creating his own work. A third person sees both works and uses the inspiration to create something entirely new while drawing bits and pieces from both.
The male-female pairs inherent within the Pleroma bring to mind the Jungian psychological concept of Anima and Animus, the male and female sides of the mind, or Freud's id and superego being the two parts of the ego but the ego also being it's own thing
Finally, the concept of Sophia F somehow breaking the laws of her reality, possibly due to how far removed she was from The One both in space and in "genetics", to create something without her counterpart, feels like a vision of imbalance, a predecessor to human struggles resulting from one ideology gaining too much power and influence, eventually being overthrown by it's opposite ideology, balancing each other out not through homeostasis, but through warring back and forth.

[AidenRKrone]

Before watching this video, I had a basic understanding of early Gnosticism and its core concepts, like spiritual–physical dualism and a successive hierarchy of demigods and gods, but I had never heard of eons, archons, spiritual races, and the sexual undertones. Gnosticism is both fascinating and disgusting.

[jacksonmiller]

Your first 1:50 seconds convinced me that the gnostics had it right. Theodicy, my dude - orthodox Christians can't handle it.

[fluorinestudios]

It seems humanity prefers male energy, as it always wins soon or later.
Maybe humanity itself is just contrasting the lonely Sophia female energy?
Maybe we are like a shadow of Sophia... an attempt of our nature to restore balance.

[ArlenGunClub]

And all of this is alive and well in various places in our culture. The teachings of Carl Jung, for example. Jordan Peterson, a follower of Jung, has lectures chock-full of Gnostic categories and ideas. Gnostics today don't talk much about archons and the demiurge, but make no mistake, the core ideas remain. Denial of the incarnation, male/female dualism, antipathy toward God particularly in the context of the Old Testament, etc. Nobody seems to notice because it's all couched in the secular and Christian terminology of our age. A trojan horse if there ever was one.

[JewessChrstnMystic]

If Sophia is wisdom then how wise is it really for her to create without her consort.. shes supposed to be wisdom but somehow does something COMPLETELY unwise and something that infact says she wasnt actually wise or wisdom at all right?

[davidemme]

Would this be like the Matrix? Am talking about the Movie.

[Incrediblefatslug]

The annunaki created us in secret. Their overlords wouldn't be happy to know what they did.

[JDonskii]

Man a load of ancient people taking magig mushrooms in a library 1500 years ago haha what a load of nonsense