Gnostic Insights

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. Last week was part one of my interview with Bishop Nathan Wilson of the Gnostic Union, and he explained to us a bit about who the Gnostic Union is and what they believe in.

At the beginning of that episode, I read from the Gnostic Union website their history and mission statement. And my brother Billy called me up and said, “Oh, but there’s a point of their theology that’s all wrong. I know they’re ecumenical and all, but we mustn’t fall into the error of wrong teaching.” And, you know, I totally agree with that concept, not teaching anything that is incorrect or that doesn’t make sense, according to the Gnosticism that I share with you here. And it created a very large discussion between my brother and me. And I don’t even have enough time in this short introduction to go into the point that Bill brought up out of their statement of beliefs. So we’ll wait and we’ll do that when these interviews are all over and that way we can go into depth and give the topic the attention it deserves.

You see, the Gnosticism that I share with you here mostly comes from the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi. And the Tripartite Tractate is a very unusual book. It is not a book of mythology. It is not a book of ancient myths concerning angels and demigods and great battles in heaven and so forth. It’s not that kind of book. We think of it as physics. It’s literally a book that describes the cosmology and the cosmogony, that is, how consciousness came to be transmitted from the base state of consciousness that we call the Father or the Source, and all the way downstream into, ultimately, us. We’re sitting here talking and thinking about it.

This is pure consciousness we’re talking about. It’s not particularities. You understand? Gnosis itself we think of as that river of consciousness. That’s what gnosis is. So, I often say, if my dog can’t understand the gnosis, it’s not really gnosis—it’s a knowledge claim. If a blade of grass or a tree in the forest can’t bask in the gnosis, then it’s not really gnosis. It’s a human knowledge claim. This is the reason why here at Gnostic Insights and on the Gnostic Reformation, we do not dwell in the history of things. We dwell in the understanding or the gnosis itself.

The cosmogony and cosmology of Gnosticism that I share with you here is a logical step-by-step rollout of the consciousness of the Father or the Source. It doesn’t really matter what you call it. It’s the base state. It’s the matrix of consciousness itself and how it flows down to us. There are necessary steps described in the Tripartite Tractate for how that consciousness is differentiated and particularized and then rolled down. And how it is that we material beings are different than the ethereal beings. How could that have possibly happened? It’s like that. It’s a logical progression that necessarily comes out of an a priori statement of consciousness as the ground state. That’s quite a bit different than mythologies of how these angels fit in with these gods and goddesses down here on earth and so forth. Because those particularities definitely come out of the mind of humans. They can be inspired. Okay, I’ll give you that. But they are knowledge claims. They’re not necessarily gnosis and because of that they can go wrong. They can be wrong.

Whereas starting with this a priori notion of consciousness ending up in us and how does that occur? By what means does that possibly happen? And how is it that we earthlings plug into that illimitable consciousness? That’s a different thing. That’s a description of process. That’s an understanding or a gnosis of what it is that we are part of.

15 steps in Gnostic Cosmology
So I’m not knocking the history or the particularities that Bishop Wilson shares with us. But the gnosis that leads you to enlightenment is simply this:

We come from the Father [El Elyon] or from the Source or from the Mother-Father or from the Great Mother—whatever you want to call it. We come from that Source, that unlimited well of consciousness and life and power and might and love. And then we will return to that.

That’s all you have to know. We come from Above and we return to Above. And with that knowledge, that’s your base state. That’s what the blades of grass and the dogs and the trees all understand. All the rest of the particularities of who and why and how, those are just details being filled in. Some of them out of gnosis, but most of them out of tradition or history.

So we’ll be proceeding now into part two of my interview with Bishop Nathan Wilson of the Gnostic Union. And later on, we’re going to talk some more about the difference between mythology and the process of gnosis. That is what this podcast specializes in. That’s what my brother Bill and I have parsed out and discovered out of direct mining of the Tripartite Tractate. Our gnosis comes from that and it proceeds in an orderly fashion that doesn’t require any extra research. It’s all about gnosis and what must be.

But here, let’s go back to this interview with Brother Wilson.

****************************************************************

Cyd:

Well, tell me more about your Bible that you wrote. What do you call it? You call it…

Bishop Nathan Wilson:

I call it The Gnostic Christian Truth Bible. I actually asked one of the older bishops that trained me, Bishop Jason, and he started that. So, I like the name. So, I thought, okay, I want to put Gnostic Christian in there. So, I was going to call it first the Truth Bible. He requested that, but I thought, well, Gnostic Christian makes it less likely for the Catholics to come after me as well, and the Protestants.

Many do not like my translations. They are quite upset that I’ve done this, but they don’t put too much light on me. So, it’s best not to give me too much attention, basically. So, the less attention I have, the less people know about this, but which is something unique about mine. I don’t just offer my translations. I offer the original Koine Greek with it, so they can look at the actual text.

So, even if my translation, say, could be wrong, they could look straight at that text and go argue with the text that they see, which I also wanted to include for their own reason, and when I included the alternative English, it’s so I might read it one way, but someone else is going to read it another way, and that can teach me something new. I feel, oh, I didn’t understand it like that. So, that’s why I wanted to keep that in there too, and a couple of words I kept in there were Greek.

So, I kept Logos. I kept Kosmos, Zoe, Sophia, Archon. Magus. I kept all these words. So, very, very Gnostic, and you won’t find these in the English translations. They have gone out of their ways to censor them. I also kept the word daemon or daimon, daemon, so I did not put that down as demon because that’s not what it means. So, I kept the original Greek context of use, and I also add a Greek, Koine Greek, index in my translation so people can actually look at little snippets of what these words mean.

So, I have some things in here. So, this is just on one page on basically all Greek with English meaning. So, there’s Logos, which I explained means God’s word, God’s authority, God’s reasoning, song, and speech, and utterance. So, when you see Christians speak that Jesus is speaking the Word, or in the beginning there was Word, they are doing a disservice to what’s being implied. This is the word of God. Very different, and even the word God we use is very English. I did keep up, but for the English sake of things. So, English people wouldn’t freak out too much on me, and another thing is also a safer mouthful, because this Word means supreme deity, deity of deities, which is very interesting. Otherwise, we would go into a god, which is lesser gods as well. So, we have a pantheon. So, it was very different, like even monotheism would evolve into what we think it is today, but in the ancient past with ancient Jewish people, they did believe in other gods, it’s just they chose to worship one god. So, this would be not the same as monotheism now, where you completely reject them as non-existent. This wasn’t that case. So, they had a very different mind.

So I kept Sophia being wisdom. I mentioned this is how this is feminine wisdom, God’s feminine wisdom, coming from the Hebrew word Chokmah. Sometimes those are called Chokmah. So, I kept that in there as Sophia.

Zoe, I kept too, meaning basically when you see eternal Zoe, that’s eternal life. So, that’s implying the feminine wisdom again, but also the spiritual benefits one receives with a spiritual relationship with God, or what’s with mine. So, I kept that in there. So, it’s very feminine, and that’s being removed. They would not want you to know that life is Zoe, and there’s other words they could have used for life or soul, but they chose to use the word Zoe, and that’s important. So, I kept that in there.

And I’ve also got Megas. I’ve already mentioned that, but Magus comes from—here’s two words that are entwined, but the thing was the church has used a later translation, which would be terrible, but that’s kind of wrong, and this is because the language would evolve over time. It came to words Megus and Magos, which basically would be Magi, and then great and powerful, larger than life.

So, Jesus was also called Iesous Magos. So, Jesus the Great, Jesus the Wise, has been censored because of Magus, and they don’t want you to know about Simon Magus. They don’t want you to know anything about Gnosticism. So, this has been censored, and I’ve also put some passages where find this.

I kept Daemon in here, or Diamon.

Gehenna, I also translated in here. I kept Gehenna. I did not use hell because hell is German. It’s realm of light in German, so it’s a Germanic word. So, I kept the word Gehenna, which is ultimately what we would kind of call hell, but it’s not what people think it is. That’s an evolved tradition. So, Gehenna or even Abaddon, these are two different words, but the same thing. Gehenna was the place where the soul was destroyed or purified. So, the text can translate to eternal punishment, but that’s not strictly bound to it. That’s more would be a later theology bound to that translation where it means period of time. So, it doesn’t necessarily mean all these different things.

It’s like the word soma where it’s all about Jesus’ body. It can be living body, dead body, or a carcass, or even the living body of the church, which is more symbolic, but fascinating.

I also kept in here a couple words, such as I explained Hades, which is mentioned with Sheol and how that’s separate from Gehenna.

I’ve kept Helios, Selene, Astron, or Asterios, as well as Aletheia. These words are very interesting because they are all gods. They’re all Greco-Roman gods. So, the scholars or, I really should say, a Christian apologist, that state there’s no pagan gods in the New Testament—they are entirely wrong. It’s just that they have looked at it in a modern Greek eye instead of looking at an ancient past—they would have seen the gods being mentioned.

So that’s very interesting. So when Jesus says that the stars and the sun is falling, he’s not speaking about the sun and stars. He’s speaking about the Helios, the Roman sun god is falling, and the stars and goddesses falling, as well as Selene, the moon, so the moon goddess. That’s the falling of the pagan Roman gods that was subjecting the Jewish people. So very different theology. So theology matters. So we have to look at how people believed back these times. [Jesus speaks of the stars, moon, and sun in Matthew 24:29, Mark 13:25, Luke 21:25. Assigning them as gods and goddesses is Bishop Wilson’s interpretation.]

The Jewish people did not like the Romans. Not saying that all of them did not. We had some that were pro-Roman. One of the Romans that was involved in the Jewish revolt, fighting against the Jewish people, was Jewish, which is cool. And he was related to Philo of Alexandria. So very interesting. I think he might be his grandson.

Cyd:

Let me jump in for a second as we’re speaking about gods and the God Above All Gods versus lesser gods. Is it your thought that the God of the Jews of the Old Testament, Jehovah, is a lesser god as opposed to the God Above All Gods?

Bishop Nathan Wilson:

Yes.

Cyd:

Okay, so Jehovah is the tribal god of the Old Testament?

Bishop Nathan Wilson:

Yes, a bit of a mix. So there’s two gods. Well, there’s a couple, if you’ve got to go every single god being mentioned.

But what they’re describing is, say, Deuteronomy 32:8, you have El Elyon dividing up the nations according to the Elohim being children of El, and Yahweh received his inheritance from the most high God. So Yahweh was more like a guardian deity, basically. He was a brother of Baal. But some Canaanites believed that Yahweh was Baal. So Yahweh kind of came later after Baal.

But the first to worship Yahweh were the Sashu of Yahweh. So they were Canaanite raiders. Hebrew was also a Canaanite language.  [The earliest trace of Yahweh isn’t Israelite—it’s desert-born. Egyptian inscriptions speak of the “Shasu of YHW,” nomadic peoples on the edges of Canaan, sometimes regarded as raiders. It suggests the name of Yahweh may have emerged out of the wilderness before it was ever claimed by Israel. Even Hebrew itself comes out of the same Canaanite linguistic world.]

So I see the views—the ones that were worshipping El would be the ones that would become the Essenes or Jewish mystics. So the Essenes worshipped El. They didn’t worship Yahweh. They viewed Yahweh as a lesser god, which is one reason they challenged the temple, because they viewed, you guys aren’t worshipping God, you’re worshipping the lesser deity, you’re worshipping an angel. And so they rejected the temple. And the priesthood was corrupt.

So then you also had the Magharians or Magarites. They were first century BC era Jews. They were proto-Gnostic, so that’s a scholar term. So they were Jewish mystics. They believed that Yahweh was a demiurge and that he was a lieutenant. So not an evil demiurge, but he was ignorant of the most high Father El Elyon, but that’s not a name to them. That was just a title meaning most high God. So they didn’t believe in God with a name, the unknowable Father, they believed was beyond sex as well. So Mother-Father, basically. So beyond all things. Too perfect to interfere with matter. And they believed that the Torah had been corrupted. So that’s fascinating. So that’s a group that we want to talk about. So we had about 25 different versions of Judaism during that time with all different beliefs.

So what type of Jew was Jesus? This makes a big, big difference. So not all Jews worshipped Yahweh. Some viewed him as a lesser God and some viewed him as the devil, which is whack. So the only Gnostics or proto-Gnostics would use that word devil at that time. So we have the wisdom of Solomon, which is the first text adored by Christians that they would say, look, this is our Messiah mentioning he’s a dying and rising Messiah calling himself the Son of God and he’s been crucified. So this means that just like our text, he would die a shameful death.

But this text mentions that through death, the devil enters the world. So the Pharisees didn’t believe in the devil. The Sadducees didn’t either. But what’s interesting about the Pharisees and Sadducees and the Herodians, which kind of made up both these groups, they were a part of both, just the Herodians mostly supported King Herod. They believed that either King Herod was the Messiah or his family would be, or they belonged to the Sadducees and didn’t believe in a Messiah. So the Sadducees didn’t believe in angels. They didn’t believe in an afterlife. They believed once you were dead, the soul turned to dust. God was too perfect to interfere with humans. So that’s an interesting belief. But we had different subsects of Sadducees that had a different opinion to that. They believed that God did interfere with humans, but we had total free will. So they could interfere with some things, but there was no Messiah. There was no angels. So they believed that a human could be a messenger of God. That was about it. So like Moses.

Then you had the Pharisees. They believed that Satan served Yahweh. His job was to test humanity or seduce humanity away from God. So that way mankind had free will. But some Pharisees didn’t believe that. They believed that Satan, Hasatan, was just symbolic for mankind’s inclination towards evil. So they didn’t believe in an evil being. So their belief was that God ordained good and evil, basically, would use evil for his own will. So that’s trippy, very trippy. So the Pharisees had a very different belief. They didn’t believe in the adversary against God. They didn’t believe in fallen angels. Later on, they would take on this belief, borrowing it from mystics and zealots. So funny enough, they would be influenced by Jesus’ teachings, such as saving a life on the Sabbath. The Pharisees would not do that. But to be fair, some Essenes wouldn’t do that either. Some Essenes were very warlike, wanting to join God’s angelic army fighting at the Armageddon of the last days of the world.

But these mystics, they are the only groups that believed in fallen angels and believed in a place of punishment. The only groups. And that’s fascinating. So they believed in a physical adversary against God. And these beliefs are carried on in the Christianity with the Armageddon day, or even the belief that God basically allows Satan to do what he wants, but he’s going to conquer over him. That was an Essene belief. They believed that Belial was the adversary against God, a fallen angel, leader of the fallen angels, and God would allow him the sin because he would destroy him in the end. So that was an Essene belief, but not all that belief. Some believed that basically fallen angels chose to rebel against God, so they had free will and that God would overcome them in the end. So that’s different. So we have to look at those beliefs because that makes a big difference in theology as well.

And one reason I chose to keep daemon or daimon in the text is because this doesn’t mean Jesus is casting out evil demons, but rather, well, the ghost of the mystic belief of pagan gods were fallen angels. So he’s casting out pagan gods, or he’s just casting out unclean spirits, depending on what the definition of word is, because that daimon or unclean spirit, for instance, isn’t always referenced to a pagan god. It’s just someone who’s died vengeful or angry at God, and is now just a ghost causing haunting. So it depends on how it’s being used. So I kept those words in there. So if the word said unclean spirit, I kept that as unclean spirit.

But if it was going into a daimon for a pagan god, basically I’ll keep it as that daimon, so they could choose how they’re going to read it. Because sometimes you’re dealing with two things at once. Sometimes you’re dealing with an unclean spirit, then a pagan god’s being mentioned too.

So this archon ruler’s having little other minions subject under him. So we even have an archon ruler being mentioned. So an archon of the daemons, ruler of pagan gods. So other gods had dominions, basically. So they viewed these other gods having their own realms of power, which we also see in the Gnostic text. So I kept all that. I also kept the archon of the synagogue, which is a ruler of the synagogue. So it’s not always a bad thing. Sometimes it’s just political rulers that are mentioned. So an archon of the Gentiles, for instance, is just a ruler of Gentiles, just a politician. I have kept archons in the sense of Yahweh somewhat, I believe, as being the devil. Because in John 8:44, we have Jesus going up to the Pharisees and Sadducees and Herodians who made up the high priesthood. He says, You are of your father, the devil. But if only these Gnostic Jews believed in the devil and their God is Yahweh, who’s he calling devil?

And then when the daemons are calling him Son of the most high God, they’re calling him huios, which means son. Huios tou theou tou hypsistou, which is Greek for Son of the most high God. But if you put this in the Hebrew, it’s Son of El Elyon. So this is what the pagan gods are calling him. So the lesser gods. And then he’s also saying that we’re all the children of El Elyon, which is also fascinating. And also the word for son they’re using just means child. It can be male or female. But again, they’re wanting a male audience. So they restricted it, which is a shame.

Cyd:

How about the word aeon? A E O N. What do you do with that word? You know, in my work with the Tripartite Tractate, it seems to me that most references of aeon in the New Testament translate it as time, a period of time, or the end of the ages, the ages. Whereas I tend to see it always as eternal beings from the ethereal plane. What do you think about that?

Bishop Nathan Wilson:

I love that. I think that too. I think it’s a mixture of all these things, which is also, I keep, it depends on the context of use. But a lot of times you do see the text that is referring to a higher being, which is beautiful to mention, especially when you’re looking at Gnostic works. But you do see this in the New Testament as well. So you see one text mentioning, for instance, who is this Sophia and this higher power? And that’s how the text can translate too, which is fascinating. So that means who’s this unknown higher power. And then it mentions about the Aeon. And so you see all this sort of stuff being mentioned. Yes, it means an eternal being or an angelic being, but it can also mean eternity or a period of time. So depending on the context of use.

So words have power as well. So that’s interesting. So again, how it’s used can make a world of a difference. And it’s interesting when they’re using certain words because there are some times that they could have chosen to use a different word. So when they’ve used a certain word like that, that can change the entire context of meaning.

Cyd:

Right. Like saying there’s some reference to judgment at the end of the age. And I’m always thinking that it’s judgment from the Aeons when I see that. But I’m not translating from scratch, I’m taking biblical translation, so what do I know?

Bishop Nathan Wilson:

You’re spot on though. So you’re correct. So it can translate that as well. And we have to realize that we have different versions of Christianity. So that’s certainly appropriate for a first century understanding. Most people are looking at from fourth century. So you’re looking at it from a first century point of view. And so you’re ahead of others in that sort of case, which is beautiful to see. So that’s rare. And I chose to keep that for that reason. So people can have their own conclusions, not having it forced onto them.

Cyd:

You are very much into the history of things. You’re an historian. I am not at all interested in history per se. I’m always talking about what other people believed in other times. That is not pertinent to our gnosis here and now. So what do you view the purpose of this deep historical knowledge that you have concerning the Jews and the Essenes and whatnot? And is it necessary to go into all of that?

Bishop Nathan Wilson:

If you want to, I guess, teach from a historical perspective as well as a spiritual one, then yes. But if you want to go for spiritual, you can just go by the heart. There were plenty of spiritual teachers that were illiterate, that could not read, that could not write, and they had a beautiful message. So there’s something more powerful that we can receive within that you won’t obtain from books. But ultimately, you can also have wisdom gained from books. It can be a form of worship or a form of connecting with the divine as well.

We have many forms of worship or many forms of experience what’s divine or having that intimate moment with what’s divine to reflect and to deepen our purpose. I wanted to know the historical man we call Jesus and ultimately put into practice what he put into practice. So I wanted to look at the history side of things and especially also, what’s another word I would like to use, decondition myself, decondition past beliefs that were harmful, that did not serve me and ultimately not serving others, and also find out that I was wrong about many things, which I wanted to know as well.

So what brought me to this was to know the man we call Jesus, Yeshua, or Yehoshua, whichever term you like, whichever name you want to use. So I want to know not just that, but I want to know his practices, what he did with his life, how his first followers lived, how the first Christians lived, and what I could use for my own spiritual path and how I could put that into practice. So that’s why I want to look at the history side of things. I think if you want to put into practice the different techniques of all the many different Gnostics, then you’re going to have to look at some of the history side of things to find those practices. That doesn’t mean that every single practice is necessary for you. So what works for me might not work for others. What works for others might not work for me. So double-edged sword.

Cyd:

What sort of practices are you referring to? Are these rituals? What’s the practices?

Bishop Nathan Wilson:

I go into some of the ancient rituals as well. Some of them I might look at the prayers that they would use, the diet they would take, or means of worship. So how they would go about their forms of private practice. So that sort of stuff. And then I might apply it into my own life and see how I can go. There’s still more I’d like to go and check out more. So I’m still studying a couple of some of the ancient practices as well. So from different or religious perspectives as well. And then I can see how I can put it to my own form of use.

So I looked at a lot of Jewish Christians, they would do the shema for instance, before their meditations. And I’ll do that as well. [“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one… You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength…”]

They also did breath works back then, which would also induce a sense of intoxication if you want to use, or light headness. And in turn that can also open a new state of reality. So entering the spiritual realm can be a vehicle, if you will, to get there. So to open the mind. And that’s also a practice that’s been used in ancient past. And we can certainly use that today. We have modern practices, say like Wim Hof, that teach breath work in meditation. That’s also useful. So sometimes looking at the past, we do see stuff in today’s world that’s not really new. It’s just being basically reentering this world again, from past knowledge gained of old. And I find that in a lot of Gnostic stuff. When you look at history, you kind of see that Gnostics kind of did a lot of things first, that what we’re doing now that we think is modern, but it’s not. It’s ancient.

Cyd:

That’s why conventional Christians who read my books, they say, oh, you’re just all new age. And I’m like, no, it’s not new age at all. It’s ancient.

Bishop Nathan Wilson:

Which is a shame that Christians have been shut off into their own world, which is kind of funny. I actually tell most Christians that they are, in fact, new age, because these beliefs are ancient. And what they are going by is, depending on what version of Christianity, if you’re Protestant, that’s 16th century, I believe. Non-denominal, 18th century. Protestant, 16th century. Catholicism, late second century. Orthodoxy, as we know it now, would be about 14th century. But older Orthodoxy, which would be the split from the Catholic church, is fourth century. So it’s when you go to Gnostic Christians, first century, and we’re really the only groups that are surviving, the Jewish Christians got killed. They ultimately were wiped out or would convert to mainstream Judaism or would become Christian or Islam, they would follow as well. So some would be converted to Muslims, which is also interesting as well.

We as Gnostics were also harmed by these other groups, by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims as well. At one point Zoroastrians, but that was only one particular era. And we’ve basically arisen from all that, from that underground, and we’ve still survived, which is fascinating. It’s beautiful that we have. And also the texts that have been rediscovered, this is not accidental. This is all happening for a reason. What’s divine is experiencing itself where it can experience itself and express itself again safely in today’s world.

In ancient past, it was dangerous to have diversion after the fourth century, which is a shame because the Catholics would kill those who came before them. They didn’t like that. And they even knew that some of the Gnostics, they had older writings, but they still denied them, which is funny. So it’s why such the hate, which is such a shame. So it goes back to that control of power, my way or the highway, basically. And it was never meant to be like that. It was meant to be very universal. It was meant to be very diverse.

The first Christians were Gnostics and Jewish Christians, a mixture between strict law observing Jews and a mixture of Gentiles. And then you had the Jewish mystics that became the Christian mystics, which is fascinating. That was the original groups. And the original groups would argue amongst each other. The strict law observing Jews wanted circumcision, where the mystics said, no, no circumcision of the hearts, let the Gentiles come. That’s fine.

So even when we look at the word, say, ethnos, for instance, in the Gospels, when you see kingdom against kingdom, nation against nation, these are the same things. So what they’re actually talking about is Gentile against Gentile and kingdom against kingdom. So the Jewish people didn’t have a kingdom at this stage. It was a mixture of Judea, Galilee and Samaria. So we’re the Samaritans. So that’s also something to take into account, too. So they didn’t like that. They were looking for a messiah to reunify the Jewish people, restore the Jewish faith and make Israel a kingdom again. And so some of them didn’t like the fact that Jesus wasn’t after this, for instance. So they didn’t like some of these teachings.

It was a bit different. But if you look at the mystics, they had a very different interpretations. They did believe in a renewal of the Jewish faith, but a renewal back to El Elyon and a rejection of Yahweh. So that’s very different. So when you look at repentance, for Israel to repent, meaning for all of Israel to return back to El Elyon. And if you look at for the Gentiles conversion, that would be referring to not converting to any religion, but converting to God. So God outside religion. So fascinating. So you see all this in the original text.

Cyd:

And why do you suppose, this might be an unanswerable question, but why do you suppose conventional modern Christians are so, you know, extremely antagonistic towards Gnostic Christians? Is it fear or what?

Bishop Nathan Wilson:

Well, they’ve been told you’re the enemy, basically. And yes, some of it is fear. Fear as well of the unknown. And also because of the need of an opponent. So they believe that they are doing a good thing. And if they don’t do this, they can be punished. So it’s the case of where a victim becomes an abuser. So most Christians have never even heard about Gnostics. It’s only the real ones who are into spiritual warfare, basically, and really full on extremist dogmatic ones that are familiar with, and apologetics. But they are now feeling like they’re losing the battle because more people were interested in Gnosticism and especially interested in other Jewish groups and the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as the Nag Hammadi. So they’re realizing their other texts and there’s other options now. And that’s great.

And regarding even my translations, one reason I chose to do it that I did, I found out that no modern English Bible translates from one source material. They’re all a mixture of different sources. So we have the Codex Sinaiticus mixed with the Latin Vulgate, mixing with Germanic copies, and then mixing ancient Koine Greek into modern Hebrew, putting it back into Greek. And that’s not good at all. So we’re just changing—we’re swapping chapters because we feel uncomfortable with them. So I was mortified when I was looking at that. And so I realized I couldn’t trust basically my Bible anymore. So I thought, well, I’m making this myself. And then I thought, well, I’m going to release it. Let’s go and share it too and do what they will with it. And it opened a lot of doorways to me, actually.

So that’s one reason I wanted to give that out so people can have their own faith in their own interpretation and also believe in the message of Yeshua, bringing people back to the Most High God, to the Unknowable God, the Living Father, the Mother-Father. And we also see the Mother being mentioned in other texts too. It’s just mostly blocked out by mainstream Christianity, which is unfair, unfair to women and unfair to humanity with their approaches. It’s been very violent. So we need to remove that violence because that’s nothing to do with Yeshua’s teachings. He didn’t teach us to go around fighting each other.

He said, Those who are for me are with me. They don’t understand his message. They very much follow the Catholic teachings of Paul that they’ve been given. And so they can look at the Gnostic teachings of Paul as well, which are also in there. Paul’s letters, we now know they’re mostly all forgeries. We don’t have any original copies either. They’re all later fourth century and we have some second century fragments. But the oldest reference to Paul is from the Ten Letters of Marcion. And he’s the man who compiled the first Christian Bible. And some people can argue, some people don’t believe he was a Gnostic. Others think he was a Gnostic. I think he was a type of Gnostic because he believed in a demiurge. So he believed that the God of the Jews was Yahweh and not the Supreme God of Jesus. That is a very Gnostic belief. But the thing is, the word Gnostic was given to us by the Catholic church, was a way of separating us and identifying us. But we wear it as a badge of honor because we understand they’re just calling us knowledgeable Christians, which is kind of funny. So language is powerful and the Catholic church certainly forgot it. So because of them, we now use daimon as demon. So they’ve basically demonized Jesus. They’ve demonized the Holy Spirit, which is their greatest sin. And they’ve demonized God and every other God. So they don’t know what damage they’ve done. And that’s not good. So I wanted to reverse that damage and bring people back to what I believe is the message of Yeshua, of Jesus, and to have their own spiritual relationship with God, an individual relationship, which is something that I want to see more of.

That’s a very beautiful thing. You can’t define that intimate experience without living it.

Cyd:

Right, right.

Well, that’s all we have time for in this episode. We’ll pick it up again next week for part three of my interview with Bishop Nathan Wilson of The Gnostic Union Church.  I like the way he talks, huh? Until next week, onward and upward and God bless us all.

Bishop Nathan Wilson pt.1

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. Hey, this week I interviewed Bishop Nathan Wilson of the Gnostic Union, and it was a good long interview, so I’ll be breaking it up probably into three segments for the next three weeks here. Bishop Wilson earned a diploma of ministry from the Gnostic Catholic Union, and then he later went on to create The Gnostic Union, and he’ll tell you about that in this week’s episode. Here I’ll read you the intro from their website.

“The Gnostic Union is an independent sacramental assembly of Gnostic Christian communities and individuals. It exists to uphold the Gnostic Christian traditions and to encourage and promote the work of Christ and the Holy Sophia in the world.
As an international, independent, autonomous, non-political organization, the Gnostic Union is in no way dependent upon any other authority outside of its own administration. We are neither Roman Catholic, Orthodox, nor Protestant. We are Gnostic Christians that encourage self-development and connecting with the spirit within to build a personal relationship with God, the Monad, the Father.

Our bishops, priests, and deacons are merely guides to help you on your spiritual journey. The Gnostic Union aligns itself with the history and teachings of the first Christians of early first century Christianity and the teachings of Jesus Christ as found in the Gospel of Thomas. We encourage new members to read from the Nag Hammadi and to understand how different early Christianity is from modern mainstream Christianity.

We welcome all people, regardless of past religious backgrounds or faiths. Gnosis means knowledge, not just simple intellectual knowledge, but deep spiritual knowledge within you. Knowledge from the Spirit, from the Holy Spirit, and from and of God.”

You see, I felt that that really went along with what we talk about here at Gnostic Insights, and so when Bishop Wilson reached out to me via our Substack Gnostic Reformation site, I was more than happy to engage in conversation with him, and I thought that having a talk with him along with you and then broadcasting it would be helpful to all of us. Here’s the last little bit that it says on their Gnostic Union homepage, which is only one page long. It’s still in development. It says,

“Gnostic Christian theology differs greatly from Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Gnostic Christianity does not depend upon the authority of a Pope or the Church. Instead, it emphasizes being reborn in Spirit, building a personal spiritual relationship with God, and becoming Christ-like by enacting the teachings of Jesus Christ in our lives.

Gnostic Christianity began from earlier Gnostic traditions, such as Hermeticism and Mysticism, which arose from Jewish mystics. Gnosticism itself is much older than Judaism, and traces back to the Hermetics of ancient Egypt, the Druids, and the ancient Greeks. Although many Gnostic Christian theologies differed, they shared a common theme of a trapped spiritual essence within the material body, the divine spark, the soul, or the spark of Sophia.

The ultimate goal for Gnostic Christians was to become like Jesus, to be reborn in Spirit, through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, Sophia, and to know thyself, reflecting the divine essence within.”

As you know, here at Gnostic Insights and the Gnostic Reformation, I stay away from the histories, because it seems to me that what is important is the here-and-now relationship we have with the Christ and with the Fullness of God. And so, I’m just not all that interested in history, but as you’ll hear from these ongoing interviews with Bishop Wilson, he’s all about history. So, for those of you who have been missing that strain of thought in our Gnostic Insights here, you’ll get an earful for the next three weeks.

So without further ado, here’s part one of my interview with Bishop Nathan Wilson of The Gnostic Union.

Cyd: Well, such a pleasure to see you. You have such a nice smile.

Bishop Nathan Wilson:
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure. It’s always lovely to meet other Gnostics, other spiritual people, all those with open hearts and open minds. It’s always lovely to see.

Cyd:
Yes. Yes. Yes, it’s true. I wish I had more of these people close around me. Do you have neighbors who are Gnostic? Do you have people you can actually face-to-face with?

Bishop Nathan Wilson:
I’ve met a priest that I can now speak face-to-face, which was really good. So, it was the first real Gnostic I got to speak to face-to-face. Mostly, I was speaking to many online in other parts of the world, and I kind of felt like I was the only one here in Adelaide, Australia. So, I kind of felt like the one odd villager out. So, it was lovely to meet some other people. I’ve trained people, and other people have done what they wanted. Other people carried on as undercover Gnostics in this world. So, yeah.

Cyd:
Let me get a formal introduction to you here going. This is Bishop Nathan Wilson of the Gnostic Union, and we have connected through Substack, although you don’t have a Substack presence, do you? You don’t have a site?

Bishop Nathan Wilson:
No, no. We have got a website in the works, but it’s still in development. I’m not too tech-savvy, but we’ve got other people that are. So, we’re mostly on Facebook and YouTube at the moment.

Cyd:
Well, wonderful. Now, tell me the difference between the Gnostic Catholic Union and just the Gnostic Union.

Bishop Nathan Wilson:
Well, we used to be the Gnostic Catholic Union as well until I basically got in charge, and then I removed the Catholic part, which they only had for the Latin reasons, meaning universal, but not everyone knows that Latin subject. They’re just going to see Catholic, and usually today’s world, when you have a Catholic Union, it’s mostly those who have been brought up with a Catholic background that have now found Gnosis, and in turn, carry on those old traditions, which I don’t find anything wrong with. I think there’s many different ways to experience Gnosis.

Gnosis doesn’t belong to any religion. It’s something you find within. It’s what you experience, spiritual knowledge gifted to you by what’s divine, by God, by the Father, by the Mother-Father, whichever term you like. The Source. It could even be referenced to, given you to by divine beings, by angels, angelic forces. So, Gnosis is something that you experience. So, it’s yours. It’s personal. It’s intimate. So, it’s a beautiful thing.

So, with the Gnostic Union, we are more open to different Gnostic schools of thoughts. So, you could be a Sethian, a Valentinian. You could be a Carpucratian Gnostic, whichever. It doesn’t matter. You could be a Jewish Christian. Whichever the path is—we’re not really dogmatic. So, we appreciate all those who come into this spiritual life, seeking answers, and respecting each other’s beliefs, which is also rare. We have to remember, when we looked at the ancient schools of thought regarding Gnosticism, the ancient Gnostics got along. They didn’t kill each other. They didn’t fight. They had some disagreements, but they shared each other’s writings, which is fantastic. So, that’s very rare when you see that in a religious or even a spiritual school of thought. Many people can be my way only. So, that’s where Gnosis comes in, that inner spiritual experience. So, one’s own personal relationship with what’s divine.

The Gnostic Union wants to encourage that, not to be bound by traditions. That’s mostly the difference between the Gnostic Union and the Gnostic Catholics, where they will be more bound by tradition, more bound by a dogmatic experience. We’re not really about that, not dissing any of that. We don’t mind, but we’re more open.

Cyd:
So, the Gnostic Catholics are still going on? That church is still active, but you have stepped away from them then, in that sense?

Bishop Nathan Wilson:
Yes, pretty much. So, we’ve done our own independent thing. So, that way we can have more schools of thought. I prefer it like that, so we can all grow from each other, which is something that I’m more about. So, that’s why I went into more of the Gnostic Union sense of things and removing the Catholic part. Some people didn’t like Catholic. Some people liked it and others were stoked that I removed that term from the group. I much prefer it. It’s less of a mouthful as well. I like things nice and simple as well.

Cyd:
Yes. So, it’s union—it’s unity. That’s what the union means in the name, not like a labor union, but the union of Gnostics. That’s lovely. That’s very lovely. So, how many people are associating with the Gnostic Union at this point?

Bishop Nathan Wilson:
Well, we have a couple of other different groups from different parts of the world. We have a Gnostic Catholic group. I think they’re Gnostic Catholic Unitarians located in the Philippines. Then, we have other groups as well that associate with us. Within the Union itself, we have a couple of different ones. We have also side branches as well that used to be a part of the Gnostic Catholic Union, but there was some theological difference. So, some splitting went on. So, there’s other groups. We still recognize each other.

Within the Gnostic Union at the moment. There is Bishop Jason, me, Bishop Nathan Wilson, Bishop Lorenzo, David and Michael, Randall over in South Africa. There’s also Priest Jeremy and Edgar and Rus. So, there’s quite a few. At the moment, it’s mostly men. We’re hoping to have some females join as well. We did have a couple of female members back in the Gnostic Catholic Union, but they ultimately retired. So, we’re hoping to expand. So, the Gnostic Union is kind of fresh on the scene. So, everything’s still building.

Cyd:
How fresh is it? How long have you been in existence here?

Bishop Nathan Wilson:
Well, in the Union itself, probably about almost two years now. It’s still maybe a year, year and a half, something like that there. So, it’s still growing in a sense. So, we’re doing okay, which is not too bad. We’re mostly on Facebook and YouTube. So, we do our online masses and group gatherings and stuff like that online as well. And mostly, just support each other’s individual works as well as promote each other’s work. And sometimes, I might edit a couple of videos of all of us together, give it to other people with their own channels, their own independent use, and then I’ll put it onto, say, the Union sites. Other people can go check it out as well.

Cyd:
I’ll be putting this up on my site. I’m going to post this to YouTube and make it for my audio podcast. But I’ll also give you the recording so that you can use it at your site if you’d like.

Bishop Nathan Wilson:
Oh, lovely. Lovely. I’d enjoy that as well.

And again, thanks for reaching out to me. I very much enjoy speaking to like-minded individuals as well. And regarding even my translations that you brought me on to discuss as well, that’s relatively new as well. It took me about two years to fully actually translate. So, to get it all together, I use encyclopedias, I used Greek, Koine Greek dictionaries, as well as I used Bill Mounce, which is one of the top Koine Greek-speaking people in the world. I have a few friends that can speak Koine Greek as well as modern Greek as well. So, that also came in handy. So, it took me a while. I started doing that while I was still with the Gnostic Catholic Union and I didn’t finish it until the Gnostic Union.

Cyd:
So, tell us about, you’re speaking of your translation, tell us about that. It’s your New Testament, is it?

Bishop Nathan Wilson:
Yeah, I did the New Testament Gospels. I used Codex Sinaiticus because that was the oldest complete text, but then I wanted to do non-canonical. I didn’t know any Coptic at all, so I didn’t want to use any other people’s work. I just went to the Koine Greek, used what knowledge I did know, and I also used experts as well. So, I was able to look at every definition of the word and term and use. I did the Gospel of Thomas, which I actually first messed up on because I found out that the version I was looking at first was actually inspired by the Coptic version put into Koine Greek, and I realized it’s not the text. So, I went to the actual fragments themselves, and so I translated from there. It’s not very long.

I didn’t use any AI recovery, so anything that wasn’t visible to our naked eye, I did not touch. So, I didn’t want to have any guessing involved. So, I just put what it was, and I did the Greek Gospel of Mary, as well as the Gospel of James, the Gospel of Peter, and I did three unknown Gospels, and they are little fragments, and they are Papyrus Oxyrhynchus. I have the names here. Actually, I better put that in—5072, and the other one was Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 840 and the other one is Egerton Gospel. So, they’re little fragments. The titles are missing. We don’t know who wrote them, so they’re unknown, but they could and likely do predate the Gospels that we do have. So, they predate the fragments we have. So, that’s interesting. So, all the fragments we have are second century. It’s likely they predate the fragments that we have.

So, I chose to do them, but the interesting side was the Egerton gospel, which was actually a two-sided text, and Bart D. Ehrman actually did side two, and I did side one. So, he didn’t realize that there was a side on one. So, that means he was only looking at digital copy only, just like me. So, he didn’t actually look at the actual Papyrus itself, and so when I did one-sided, I didn’t realize there was a double side to that text, and so otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. So, the interesting thing is side one has not been publicly released for public domain, where side two has been released, which is very suspect, if you ask me, and I didn’t like that. So, I thought I’d introduce some texts that are very little looked at that were very Gnostic, such as Jesus insulting the Pharisees for dipping in waters that pigs jumped into and making themselves look like prostitutes to attract men.

Cyd:
They’re highly offensive, yes.

Bishop Nathan Wilson:
Yes, and that’s why they really want to release that publicly. So, you have to pay a scholar for their works, and that’s not really fair. All this knowledge should be for free, especially when you’re looking at our own religious or spirituality or the text involved in that. Otherwise, we’re limiting ourselves, and that’s definitely not fair. So, I think we should be more open, and the text should be up for public display, public domain for everyone to have access to. So, that’s what I ultimately believe in. It’s one reason I chose to share my translations and make accessible for free digital copies. I didn’t want people to just buy my work rather than download the digital text and just read it for themselves. Go to the library, print it out. It might be cheaper. So, when I do sell my texts, I donate it, like some of it’s a charity anyway, to Make-A-Wish Foundation. So, that’s something I do on my end. So, everything I do, I try not to make money just for myself. I try to do other things with it because I’m not really materialistic. I live very much a monk lifestyle, so I read a lot.

Cyd:
Yeah. Yeah, I do too. I live like a nun, I say. I’ve got a little cloister where I sleep. I live in a one-room place, so it’s very interesting.

Would you explain to us the difference between the Koine Greek and the Coptic Greek and which was written and why are there two different versions?

Bishop Nathan Wilson:
Okay, well the Coptic, when you see Coptic Greek, that’s devolving into Coptic. So, very early proto-Coptic is what scholars term, is the developing into it. You see it with Greeks in the very language. Otherwise, Coptic language very much is a mixture of Greek and Egyptian. So, Egyptian hieroglyph turned into writing basically, but mixed in with Greek. So, Greek was like the English of the past back then. Hebrew also borrowed from the Greek during the second temple period of Jesus’ time. So, the word Judaism and synagogue are Greek words, for instance. So, a lot of borrowing, but the Greeks also borrowed from the Canaanites, such as the Phoenician language or the alphabet. So, that’s also fascinating. So, the ancient past, it was all about borrowing and making it your own, you know.

But yeah, with Greek as well, that would be also evolving as well. So, you have, within the gospel itself, you might have one word being spelt slightly different, but ultimately meaning the same thing. And all that is, is one dialect from another speaking from one coastal region to a different coastal region. Obviously, saying the same thing, it just might be the accent. So, that’s played different in the language. So, it’s like we see hilios or hilion, but it’s the same root message. It’s just one person’s pronouncing it in the market different from this region, because he’s closer to the shore and other ones closer to the inner cities. And that’s basically all. So, Greek’s very advanced. You can have one word that can mean ultimately different meanings. And some words you come across can have hundreds of meanings, and that can make things difficult when translating. So, with the Koine Greek, we only know 70% to 90% of the language. We know the 100% of the alphabetical, but we don’t know every context of use.

So, because of that difficulty, I had to add alternative English translations. So, I realized then that every translation we’re reading is just based on someone else’s interpretation of that translation. And it’s like, oh, that kind of sucks, so I put them all in there. So, when you come across the word aftos, for he, she, it, they, them, this one, I leave it as all of that, so, you can choose what that means. Because Jesus is speaking to diverse audiences. He’s speaking to males and females, not just men. And that’s what people forget.

It’s like the word for spirit is also very feminine in Hebrew. In Greek, it’s masculine and feminine. So, it’s used as both, which is fascinating as well for the spirit within us, you know. So, but again, that’s going back to that root meaning of feminine, because when you add in the word hagion pneuma you now have the Holy Spirit, but that’s a feminine word of it. Otherwise, the root word of masculine is hagios, but the female name or the feminine version of that concept is hagion.

Cyd:
Ah, that’s fascinating. Yeah. You run into the same problem when translating Chinese, because Chinese pictograms can just mean many, many things. So, I’ve studied the Tao Te Ching quite a bit, and everybody’s book that’s famous of the Tao Te Ching, it’s their translation out of a hundred choices for every word. So, it’s, I understand quite a bit what you’re saying there.

Well, tell me this, what makes you a bishop? How is it that you’re calling yourself bishop?

Bishop Nathan Wilson:
Well, I was ordained by, well, back when it was the Gnostic Catholic Union, I was ordained by Bishop Bill Thomas, and he was the bishop of a church in Florida. He was running a church. He was an older man, so he’s kind of, he retired for a bit, and now he’s more of a wandering bishop, because he had trouble with the funds of running a church. It’d be quite expensive. So, he was part of an organization that was the Gnostic Catholic Union. A lot of members retired as well, then he took over, and then it kind of went on for a few years, and then they started retiring, and then I joined from there, and I was ordained, and I took up a course with them, started off as a deacon, then became a priest, and then as they were retiring, I was made bishop, basically, and so then I was left with a little bit of the reins.

So, it was from there, it was a lot more—more churches were involved. So, some of that has also, a lot of them have also retired or ultimately changed theologies. One of the original members of the Gnostic Catholic Union, I believe, is now either an Orthodox priest or joined the Orthodox Church, and he renounces all his old Gnostic past, which is kind of a shame.

So, sometimes that does happen. So, people become wanderers because of, people basically rely solely on one priest, oftentimes, which is also sad, and when one priest moves, people lose passion, and sometimes that’s how it is. So, I prefer to have people more independently on their own, not just say rely on me, I make other people bishops so they can carry on with their own, and from there, expand it.

So, someone might have, say, the coin enough to start their own church, and from there, maybe, from there, do whatever they need. So, it inspires, and still something to bring a bit of community in, and have a little bit of recognition from other people, basically. So, I kept that term. I was almost considering to remove the title, bishops and priests, but a lot of the old members wanted to keep it as well, and some of the young ones did as well. So, I thought, well, I’ll keep the term for them in their sake. Otherwise, I was going to keep it as teachers, or brothers and sisters, but I still encourage our members to, when dealing with each other, not just sit there and call each other bishops, or bishopettes, or priests, or priestess, whichever term they prefer.

I prefer to call us brothers and sisters, which is more stressed. Even with the outfit some people are talking about, I would tell them, remember that Jesus wouldn’t be wandering around with fancy robes, or wearing collared shirts, or wearing gold jewelry, and say, I’m doing now, in a sense. He was out in the wilderness, gathering with community.

So, as blessed as those who are poor, you know, so, which was rare. So, a lot of people wanted money back then. So, he was very much for the poor, which is beautiful to see. There were rich Christians. It doesn’t mean that was strictly only for poor people only. There were ones who were shipfarers, and in turn, would carry their message throughout the ports, or from region to region.

Cyd:
I was just wondering–you are obviously a Christian Gnostic, as am I. I know that you’re open to all Gnosticism, but Gnostics who reject the notion of the Christ, or the need for the Christ, doesn’t that create some kind of difficulty, let’s say?

Bishop Nathan Wilson:
It would conflict a little bit, yes. I haven’t really come across ones that more reject the Christ. I wouldn’t mind. I have come across ones who have debated me over it in a sense, which I don’t mind in a sense, but I would also encourage them to say, look at the message. Ultimately, it’s about finding the Christ within, being Christ-like for yourself. It goes back to that root word of the first Christians for Christanos, being little Christs, little anointed ones. So, those who were taken on their masters teaching to be Christ-like.

But say we have ones that don’t believe Jesus existed. I don’t mind that, because ultimately it is the message, but I will tell them I do believe because I have reasons. I would say for them to look up, say, Judas Kriakos, which is a grandson of Jesus, which is recorded in history. We have church father writings that actually whinged about Jesus’ family being Jewish Christians and not Catholic. So, that’s interesting. So, why would you whinge about a family if the man did not exist? For instance like that. But ultimately, there were some Gnostics that didn’t believe that Jesus existed, but was rather a spirit or was the myth that you took on yourself. So, I’m okay with that, as long as we don’t conflict with each other, with our hearts, as long as we’re not hating each other. So, we can have separate beliefs, as long as we respect those beliefs. Ultimately, that’s what would stop the disheartening and also the conflictions.

end part one of interview

Okay, we’re going to stop for this week. This is a good place to stop because next, Bishop Wilson goes on to discuss his translation of the New Testament and also some other Gnostic texts. So, we’ll spend next week talking about his translation that he calls the Gnostic Christian Truth Bible, and we’ll get into that.

Also, I did record this entire interview as a Zoom video, and as soon as I get that edited, I’ll be posting it to YouTube so you will be able to find it and watch the interview as Bishop Nathan Wilson and I discuss these things. So, I hope to see you there, and thank you for listening this week, and we’ll pick it up again next week.

Until then, God bless us all, and onward and upward.

The Gnostic Union Facebook

The Gnostic Union YouTube Channel

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. This week, we’re going to follow up on last week’s episode, which was called Gnostic Pentecost, and that was first broadcast on the 6th of June, 2026. I have a lot more examples out of the New Testament of the Bible about Pentecost, and as we learned last week, Pentecost is what we’ve been calling the coming of the Third Order of Powers here in this Gnosticism out of the Tripartite Tractate that I share with you at Gnostic Insights.

Here’s a quote from last week’s episode where it says,

Jesus stood up and said loudly, ‘if anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and let him drink. Whoever has faith in me, just as scripture has said, out of his parts, living streams of water will flow.’ Now he said this in regard to the spirit whom those who had faith in him were about to receive, for as yet there was no spirit, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. [Hart’s New Testament, John, Chapter 7, verse 37]

And this is speaking of what we call the Holy Spirit, because of course we have spirit. We’re born with spirit, because we have the Fullness of God within us. That is the First Order of Powers.

But Jesus here is talking of the Third Order of Powers, the army of Christ that has come after Jesus is, glorified. And glorified means risen from the dead, ascended into the sky in front of hundreds of witnesses. And glorified means that Jesus is living above, just as we will all be living above in a glorified body in the presence of the Father.

So I shared that with you last week, and if you haven’t heard last week’s episode, again it’s called Gnostic Pentecost, go back and listen to it, because it’s a deep dive—what we call hermeneutics in theology or philosophy. It’s a deep deconstruction of a couple of very important passages in the Old and New Testament that have to do with the coming of what is called Pentecost. And Pentecost was when the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, came and sat upon the disciples while they were gathered in the upper room after Jesus had left and gone back above.

But we’ve been talking about Pentecost all along here at Gnostic Insights as the coming of the Third Order of Powers that is the army of Christ. I’m going to quote a whole lot of New Testament for you today, and I take this out of The New Testament by David Bentley Hart, published by Yale University Press. So let’s start with John 14:16-30, and this is Jesus speaking.

‘And I shall entreat the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, that he may be with you throughout the age.’

Now, by the way, when Hart and all translators translate throughout the age, they’re talking about Aeons. The word is Aeons. And so an alternate translation that Hart mentions in the footnote to this passage, throughout the age, can also mean, or until the Aeons come, or until the return to the Aeons.

So listen to this again.

‘And I shall entreat the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, that he may be with you throughout the coming of the Aeons.’

And of course here at Gnostic Insights and in Gnosticism, we believe that these Aeons are units of consciousness, that they’re parts of the Son, they’re parts of the mind of God. It’s not a measure of time, but a measure of consciousness.

Carrying on with John 14:16.

‘The Spirit of Truth, which the cosmos cannot receive, because it neither sees nor knows it, you know it because it abides with you and will be within you. I shall not leave you orphans. I am coming to you. Just a little while, and the cosmos no longer sees me, but you see me.

Because I live, you too will live. On that day, [and he’s referring to Pentecost, the coming of the Third Order of Powers], you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, that one is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.’

Then Judas, not Iscariot, says to him, ‘Lord, what has happened then that you were about to manifest yourself to us and not to the cosmos?’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘if someone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and we’ll make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words, and the word that you hear is not mine, but rather that of the Father who has sent me. These things I’ve spoken to you while remaining with you, but the Advocate, the Spirit, the Holy One, which the Father will send in my name, he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you.

Peace I leave you, my peace I give to you. I give to you not as the cosmos gives. Do not let your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. I will no longer speak much with you, but the Archon of the cosmos is coming, and he has no hold in me, but so that the cosmos may know that I love the Father, and that just as the Father has commanded me, so I do.’

Now, what Jesus was sharing with the disciples in this passage was that his physical body was about to go away. We know that he was about to be crucified and gone. They don’t exactly understand what’s about to happen because they can’t see the future, but Jesus can. He says,

I’m going to go away, but don’t worry, I’m going to send a Spirit called the Advocate, and it will come in my name, and in the name of the Father, and it will advise you. Right now you walk with me physically, and I am outside of you, but when the Advocate comes, it will be inside of you.

And here at Gnostic Insights, I describe the coming of the Third Order of Powers as overlaying our Second Order Power. See, it’s like your cells of your body. Imagine that there is another version of you that is perfected, that is cleansed of all illness, or cleansed of all poor cellular replication. We’re making an analogy here between cells and spiritual parts, but right now I’m just talking about cells. So let’s say you’ve got all these kind of little faults in your body that have developed over the years.

Now imagine there was a perfected body that slipped right into you, like a sort of like a ghost, the Holy Ghost, overlaying upon your cells that cause your cells to pattern themselves after it. It’s like stepping into your body and overlaying what has been damaged over the years.

Well, that is what happens with our spiritual bodies. We are what are called Second Order Powers, and we are made up of various combinations of, I hate to get confusing here for you, but of the First Order Powers. The First Order Powers were the Aeons. The Second Order Powers are all of us living things.

We Second Order Powers are the children of the Aeons of the Fullness–the First Order Powers, who are themselves the Totality of the Son. The Third Order Powers are the army of the Christ, who represent all of the Powers of the ethereal plane, individually and collectively working for our redemption.
The Third Order Powers are the perfected Christly powers. We are the fruit of the First Order Powers. Each of us is unique, a unique combination of various First Order Powers, and they make up our body. It’s like the recipe. Each of us has a different recipe. Down here, we manifest that recipe. That is who I am. You have a slightly different recipe, but mainly we’re the same. When the Third Order of Powers come, they overlay upon your unique combination and my unique combination.

The Third Order Powers are unique to each one of us because they are made to be in our countenance so that we will recognize them. These perfected Third Order Powers, the army of Christ, steps into our soul, steps into our spirit, and overlays upon our pattern, upon our recipe. That’s what brings us the perfection of the Christ. But it only happens if you ask for it. It only happens when you allow it and you seek it out.

Now, at the end of that quote I just read you out of John, he says, peace I leave you, my peace I give to you. I give to you not as the cosmos gives. And you see, the distinction is that the cosmos, that’s our material instantiation. That’s the material part of our bodies. It’s the material world. It’s matter itself. And Jesus is saying that when he gives you something, it’s not the way that the Demiurge gives it to you, with strings, lots of strings. Jesus says, do not let your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. So we’re not supposed to live in a spirit of fear. There’s no need to be afraid.

When you trust in the Father, when you trust in the Christ and the Holy Spirit, you are imbued with the most powerful energy that has ever been. It far outweighs the energy of the cosmos, the energy of the material, the energy of the Demiurge, the energy of the archons. It outranks them, it outweighs them, it’s more powerful. And when you allow it to come inside of you, then you have that power within you to overcome the archons, the cosmos, the Demiurge. Jesus says, I will no longer speak much with you, [that is physically, because he’s about to be crucified], for the archon of the cosmos is coming. He’s speaking of the Demiurge in the form of the Roman soldiers that are about to arrest him and put him to death. And he has no hold in me. [So he’s saying that even though the archon of the cosmos is coming, it couldn’t contain him except that Jesus is allowing it.] He has no hold in me, [because Jesus is more powerful, because Jesus embodies the Christ].

He’s the first perfected human to embody the energy of the Third Order Powers. That’s what it means by being fully human and fully God.

Jesus says, but so that the cosmos may know that I love the Father, and that just as the Father has commanded me to do so.

And what is this commandment of Jesus? Well, that’s described in Matthew 22:37-39—the teaching most often referred to as Jesus’s commandment and what is called the great commandment. And Jesus summarizes God’s law, all of those laws of the Old Testament that the Demiurge had constructed. He summarizes them into two main commands.

1: Love God completely.

2: Two, love others as yourself.

And here’s the quote,

‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your reason. This is the great and first commandment. The second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets depend upon these two commandments.’

Together, these two are described as the foundation of all the other laws and teachings.

Of course, when the Demiurge had this transcribed, he had the hundreds and hundreds and thousands of rules added onto it, because the Demiurge is law-bound, and he can only work through law. But Jesus said, don’t worry about all those little laws that you’ve been burdened with. All you have to know is love your neighbor, and love the Father, love God, and then all the other commandments will take care of themselves, because the power of love will be working through you.

The book of John, chapter 15:17-27, puts it this way:

‘These things I command you so that you love one another. If the cosmos hates you, you know that it has hated me before you. If you were of the cosmos, the cosmos would have loved its own. But since you are not of the cosmos, the cosmos therefore hates you. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know the one who has sent me.

Whoever hates me also hates my Father. But they have both seen and hated both me and my Father. And thus might the passage written in the law, [and that’s the law of Jehovah, of the Old Testament], be fulfilled.’

And here’s what the passage said,

‘When the Advocate comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth who comes forth from the Father, he will testify concerning me. And you too must testify, for you are with me from the beginning.’

Now, this from the beginning—that’s a Gnostic term, and that was before the material cosmos was created from the Fall. In the Tripartite Tractate, it says that only those things which were from the beginning will continue through eternity. The rest will be disappeared.

So, Jesus is saying that the number one command is to love. And he’s also saying that the cosmos will hate you if you do, because the cosmos hates love. Again, from the New Testament book of John, in chapter 16, verses 1 through 15, Jesus says,

‘I’ve spoken these things to you so that you might not be caused to falter. They will make you exiles from the synagogue, [and I add, and the churches and the mosques], and an hour is coming in which everyone who kills you thinks he is offering a service to God. And they will do these things because they have known neither the Father nor me. But I tell you the truth, it is for your own good that I should go away. For if I do not go away, the Advocate, [that is the Holy Spirit, that is the Third Order Powers, that is the army of Christ], surely is not coming to you. But if I go, I shall send him to you. And when he comes, it will prove the cosmos wrong concerning righteousness and concerning judgment, concerning sin.’

And by the way, sin means literally to miss the mark, as if you’re shooting an arrow at a target. It’s to miss the bullseye. It means to fail, to fall short, as if your arrow fell short of the bullseye. So that’s what sin is. It’s not a list of naughty things. It simply means to miss the mark.

So Jesus is saying, when that one comes, the Spirit of Truth,

‘He will prove the cosmos wrong concerning righteousness and concerning judgment, concerning sin because they do not have faith in me, and concerning righteousness because I am going to the Father and you no longer see me, and concerning judgment because the archon of this cosmos, the Demiurge, has been judged. I still have many things to tell you, but right now you cannot hear them. But when that one comes, the Spirit of Truth, he will guide you on the way to all truth, for he will not speak from himself, but will speak what he hears, and he will announce to you things to come. That one will glorify me because he will receive from what is mine and will announce it to you. All that the Father has is mine. That is why I said that he receives from what is mine and will announce it to you.’

Now in this passage, when Jesus is talking about the Spirit of Truth and that it will come to the disciples after he is physically disembodied, it will come to everyone who accepts the coming of the Spirit of truth—that Spirit of truth, that’s gnosis. That is gnosis. That’s all there is to it.

It’s not lists of this and lists of that that you have to memorize. It’s not the names of the angels and the names of the archons and the names of the Aeons. It’s not the order of the planets or the astrology. It’s not the secrets of alchemy. Those are not the gnosis of which Jesus is speaking. It doesn’t have to do with having magical powers over the cosmos. The cosmos is the cosmos. This is the kingdom of the Demiurge. This is the kingdom of the archon of the cosmos. This is the valley of death.

The Spirit of Truth, the gnosis that comes from above, is all about the Father. It’s about eternity and the ethereal plane. It’s simply about love and the fact that we come from love and that we will return to love and that this down here is mostly delusion. It’s mostly falsehoods. That’s why the Holy Spirit is known as the Spirit of Truth. It’s what combats the Spirit of delusion, the falsity of the deficiency, the falsity of the imitation, as we know it here in Gnosticism.

So you see these quotes in the New Testament, they’re all about gnosis. They are Gnostic. It’s just that we are not familiar with them if we are Christians nowadays, because the gnosis was taken out. The true references, the definitions of these phrases, were taken out. That’s why I call this the Gnostic Reformation. I’m literally sitting here attempting to return Christianity to its roots, to what Jesus is teaching here. He’s teaching of the Father above, not the God of this world.

Now you’ve heard the Holy Spirit being referred to as the Advocate, which is a legal term. And when Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit, he called it the Advocate. And the Advocate’s role is to teach us, to guide us, to remind us, and to empower us as believers. The Son of Man, whom Jesus was known as, is a messianic title from Daniel 7 of the Old Testament, one of the prophets of the Old Testament. The Son of Man is a title that refers to one who receives authority, kingship, and judgment. He’s the representative human who rules God’s kingdom. So the role of the Messiah, or the Son of Man, is judge, king, mediator of God’s reign. And the Holy Spirit is our Advocate. He’s the defense attorney. So who’s the prosecution? It’s the Accuser, and that is the original word used whenever you see the word Satan referred to. It’s actually the Accuser.

So the Accuser is the Demiurge, or one of his chief henchmen, one of his archons, that we call Satan. He’s our prosecutor. It’s its job to make us feel bad, to accuse us of crimes and sins and petty misdeeds, and not being loving enough or not being good enough to even talk to God. But the Holy Spirit is our defense attorney on the other side, who says, of course they’re good enough. Of course you’re fine. If you love me, if you love the Father, all is good. That’s his job. And it’s the job of the Son of Man, the king, to judge.

So I’m going to put a little chart in the transcript here of the difference between the Son of Man and the Advocate. The Son of Man is the Messiah, King, Judge. The Advocate is the presence of God within.

Role
Son of Man (Jesus)
Advocate (Spirit)

Identity
Messiah, King, Judge
Presence of God within

Mission
Establish kingdom, redeem humanity
Continue and internalize that work

Authority
Given dominion over all
Acts with Jesus’ authority

Relationship to believers
External presence (historical)
Internal presence (ongoing)

You see, it’s always within. So this notion that the Third Order Powers comes into us and overlays upon our Second Orderness, that’s not Gnostic hyperbole. That’s not my imagination. It says this in the Bible. It’s the presence of God within.

The mission of the Son of Man, of Jesus, was to establish the kingdom here in the cosmos. Because after the Fall, the cosmos was entirely ruled by the Archon of the cosmos. But after the coming of the Son of Man, that is our most perfect human being from above, it is the Son of Man’s job, his mission to establish the kingdom here in the cosmos, to redeem us. And the Advocate’s job is to continue and to internalize that work, to bring it inside of each and every human being on the planet. But it can’t do that without cooperation, without being invited.

So this is God outside of us and God inside of us, an internal presence, and it’s ongoing. In Gnostic terms, the ongoing Spirit, the Advocate, that brings the presence of the Son into us is the Third Order of Powers that comes with each of our countenances, or our faces, so that we can recognize the one to whom we pray. That’s a paraphrase out of the Tripartite Tractate, that the Third Order Power, the Christ, comes with the face of everyone who prays for help. It also comes with the face of every  one of the Aeons above, and with the face of the Son of God. So you can see it’s the most powerful thing that exists. The Third Order of Powers replaces our Second Order Power with a renewed and repaired indwelling of Spirit.

We can’t rectify our own flaws. Redemption must come from a wiser, greater source. If you could fix yourself, you’d have fixed yourself by now. It’s called pulling yourself up from your own bootstraps. You can’t lift yourself off the ground by pulling up on your shoelaces. You need a more powerful figure from the outside. If they pull up on your shoelaces, they can lift you up from the ground. You see, that’s the expression known as being lifted by your bootstraps. I don’t know if you remember that or not.

Anyway, we can’t rectify our own flaws. Redemption must come from a wiser, greater source. The Christ was formed for that very purpose and duty.

The Son of Man is our perfected genotype of humanity. Let me repeat John 16, 7 to 11 again.

‘For if I do not go away, the Advocate surely is not coming to you. But if I go, I shall send him to you. And when he comes, he will prove the cosmos wrong concerning righteousness and concerning judgment, concerning sin because they do not have faith in me, concerning righteousness because I am going to the Father and you will no longer see me, concerning judgment because the archon of this cosmos has been judged.’

Do you understand that phrase better now? Now from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 3, verse 18 through 23.

‘Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks to be a wise man in this age, let him become foolish in order to become wise. For the wisdom of this cosmos is folly before God. For it has been written, He catches the wise in their craftiness. And again, the Lord knows the ponderings of the wise that they are vapid. Hence, let no one boast in human beings, for all things are yours, and you the anointed and the anointed gods.’

And this bit about appearing foolish in the eyes of the world—I know that when we profess to follow these Gnostic teachings, that people who think themselves so wise, so smart, and so much better than we are, think we’re stupid jerks. We are much reviled for being innocent, for being true believers. But that is how we are to be. We are to believe as children, fully believing with all of our hearts and minds and reason.

Don’t hold back because you’re afraid that people are going to think you’re stupid. They’ve always thought that. They mocked Jesus. Of course they’re going to mock you. But the wisdom of this cosmos is folly before God, it says. And it also says that the ponderings of the wise are vapid. Vapid means empty, like vapor. So people that think they’re so darn smart, they’re not. They’re just serving the archon of the cosmos. But it’s folly. It’s foolishness. You can’t take it with you.

All that matters is your connection to the Father above, and your love for the Father, and your love for your fellow humans. Not pretending, not professing to be love that arises from hatred, but true love, true righteousness. And when you ask the Third Order Powers to come and help you, to come and redeem you, that’s between you and the Father. That’s between you and the Aeons. That’s between you and the Christ. It doesn’t have to do with some priest, or some minister, or some internet influencer. It’s a private matter.

But once you do have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and you’ll know it when it happens, that’s that born-again experience. You’ll be filled with reassurance. You’ll be flooded with love. You’ll know that it happens. And then you will know that you are the anointed, that is, that you belong to Christ, and that you belong to the anointed God, that is, the Father.

So in conclusion, from the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 2, verse 38, it says,

And Peter said to them, Change your hearts, [and that’s from the hearts of stone to hearts of receptive flesh, like we talked about last week], change your hearts. Let each of you be baptized upon the name of Jesus, the Anointed, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, [that is, the army of the Christ, the Third Order of Powers, sent to battle the archons of this cosmos on your behalf].

God bless us all. Onward and upward.

If you would like to contribute to this ongoing work, please use the form below. You are appreciated!

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.Name *First
Last

Email *
Stripe Credit Card *

Choose your item *Item A - $10.00
Item B - $25.00
Item C - $50.00

Total$0.00

Submit

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack.

This week I was listening to one of the radio preachers I like to listen to and I caught a sermon on the Pentecost, and I realized I had at that point a Gnostic insight that Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, when it infused the disciples in the upper room—that is the coming of the Third Order of Powers released by the Christ after his resurrection—that the Third Order Powers are the “anointing of the Holy Spirit.”

So quickly, let’s look at the Acts of the Apostles book out of the New Testament, Chapter 2, which is what we now call Pentecost.

And when the day arrived that completed the fifty days after Passover, they were all gathered together in one place, and suddenly there came a noise, like a turbulent wind borne out of the sky, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.

And there appeared before them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest, one each upon each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them to utter. Now dwelling in Jerusalem, there were devout Judeans from every nation under the sky, and on the advent of this noise, the multitude gathered and were confused, because each one heard them speaking in his own language.

And they were amazed and astounded, saying, look, are not all of those who speak Galileans? And how is it that each one of us hears his own language, the languages in which we were raised? And all were amazed and entirely at a loss, saying to one another, what does this portend? But others, ridiculing them, said, ah, they’re full of sweet new wine. But Peter, standing up along with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them all. Judean men and all of you staying in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and lend your ears to my words, for these men are not drunk, as you suppose, as it is the third hour of the day.

Rather, this is what was declared through the prophet Joel. And in the last days it shall happen, says God, that I will pour forth from my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall dream dreams.” [Hart’s New Testament]

Pentecost by el Greco

Now, it’s a much longer passage, and it’s very thrilling and exciting, but we don’t have time today to go into it. Perhaps we’ll speak about this in more depth very soon. But that is the first Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit upon humanity. And I’m going to talk about that today to clear up that confusion, because I’ve always had a bit of a confusion over what we speak of as the Holy Spirit dwelling in us in a Christian manner, or the Holy Spirit coming like tongues of fire in the Pentecost story of the upper room in the book of Acts, yet we all have the Holy Spirit of the Fullness of God within every cell of our bodies and throughout our entire organism. All of the Second Order powers are infused with the power of God. So what is the Holy Spirit then?

And now I understand the distinction between the infusion of the Third Order of Powers and the infusion of the Second Order of Powers.

You see, we are Second Order Powers. The Aeons of the Fullness are First Order Powers. They have their place Above. We are their fruit. We are their spores. (And I actually ran across a radio preacher, of all things, again last week, saying that the original word for fruit as used in the New Testament is spore. And I’m like, yes, that is exactly what I’ve been saying. So that was another cool Gnostic insight that came by way of a Christian radio preacher. So you can never tell what you’re going to hear on Christian radio.)

So, we are the spores of the First Order of Powers. We are their fruit. We are their children. We are the Second Order of Powers, and that is all living things in the cosmos. Everything that moves around, everything that’s soft and squishy, the meat, as I like to say, as opposed to the mud, which is the realm of the Demiurge—the rocks and minerals, the molecules and atoms. But the Third Order of Powers is the army of the Christ. We’ve spoken of that often.

We’ve had three recent episodes about the indwelling of the Christ. For example, The Gnostic Redemption of the Nag Hammadi from May 29th, 2026, Army of the Christ, May 16th, 2026, and Understanding Gnosticism: The Path to Inner Knowledge from May 9th, 2026. These all have to do with the coming of the Third Order of Powers.

And the coming of the Third Order of Powers didn’t come to Earth until Christ walked the Earth in the form of a human, and that is Jesus the Christ. He’s the only one who has ever claimed that “I and my Father are One.” Jesus is not the same as Buddha. Jesus is not the same as Muhammad or any other prophet. Jesus is not simply a good teacher or an exemplar of morality and ethics. If you think that, as many modern theologians do—the postmodern theologians, the deconstructionists—they have reduced the power of Jesus to that of a prophet or a teacher.

And even people I hear, strangely enough, out there on YouTube, claiming that Jesus was a fraud—that there is no such thing as anything that happened in the Bible, Old Testament or New Testament. That’s an absurdity that is being promulgated by non-believers. If you are a believer in the Father, then you are a believer in the Christ, because Christ was the emissary of the Father to Earth to bring the correcting algorithm, I like to call it, to Earth to patch up our Second Order Power that has been forgotten. We’re born with it. We fully instantiate it within our bodies, but we’ve overlaid it with all kinds of junk, karma and memes from our environment that cloud our gnosis, cloud our ability to perceive the power of the Aeons within us. Christ came, the Third Order of Powers, the army of the Christ, to help us to remember, to remind us of our Second Order power, to remind us of where we come from, to remind us of the Father and the Aeons above.

I took notes from the Pentecost sermon I listened to, and I’m going to represent these notes as a Gnostic teaching for you, because once you have the gnosis working in you, once you’ve come to terms with Christ and the Father and the Aeons and the gnosis that you were born with, once you begin to remember your inherent transcendence, then you can read the New Testament with eyes wide open. You can understand the mysteries of the New Testament much better than typical Christians do, because they’re trapped in a formula that is derivative of the early Catholics that had stripped the gnosis out of the Bible in the first place. So we must free ourselves from the doctrine, but not free ourselves of the gnosis. Tricky.

The occasion known as Pentecost was when Jesus had been crucified, entombed, resurrected, and then ascended back up above into the Fullness—above the Fullness, because he’s the king of all. And he had promised that he would send a helper—to not worry. He had told his disciples, don’t worry, I’m sending you a helper to help you bring the gnosis to the world, essentially is what he said. This was also promised in the Old Testament.

And here I’m going to read you a very important verse out of the Old Testament and translate it for you into Gnostic terms. The verse is Ezekiel 36:24—28, where God promises to cleanse and put a new heart and a new spirit into believers.

Now it’s tricky when going all the way back to the Old Testament, because the God of the Old Testament is not the God Above All Gods. The God of the Old Testament, Jehovah, well, it’s pretty much equivalent to the Demiurge. And that’s very dicey, very tricky. The ego of the God of the Old Testament, the ego of Jehovah, is when Jehovah speaks in very egoistic terms about itself and about obedience and the law because, remember, Jehovah is law-bound. The Demiurge doesn’t remember; the Demiurge has forgotten its origins above.

When this radio preacher referenced Ezekiel 36, I went to what’s called the online Bible Gateway. That’s a resource you can use. And you type in any phrase or any citation, such as Ezekiel 36:24—28, and it will give you all of the various translations. And you can choose which translation you read or you read them all. Well, since this was a Hebrew exhortation, I decided to use the Orthodox Jewish Bible, which does have a lot of Hebrew in it. So then we have to go into Hebrew translations, but that was a good exercise as well.

Oh, to go back and clear up confusion about how to read the Old Testament—if the Old Testament is largely demiurgic, it’s basically when Jehovah is speaking that’s demiurgic. But the prophets were in touch with their gnosis. The prophets were talking to the God Above All Gods. They weren’t talking to Jehovah. They were talking to the God Above All Gods. So their prophecies are coming from above. That seems a pretty simple way to understand it. So the histories are one thing. That’s the histories of the of the Hebrews who were the people of Jehovah. Jehovah was their tribal god. And then there are the prophets who were speaking to the God Above All Gods and giving the Hebrews instructions from the God Above All Gods. These are higher instructions than Jehovah.

You see, Jehovah doesn’t remember that it’s a fallen part of an Aeon. Here at Gnostic Insights, we talk about that Aeon as Logos. Many other Gnostics call it Sophia. I prefer Logos. That’s out of the Tripartite Tractate. Logos split apart when he fell and abandoned the chaos down below. And the Demiurge is part of that chaos.

So the Demiurge put this world in order, formed the heavens and the Earth in a godlike manner, because he had all the blueprints. He had the remembrance of how things went together, but he didn’t have the remembrance of the Father or the remembrance of his better ascended Self, that being Logos, or the Aeons out of which he fell, the Fullness out of which he came. The Demiurge woke up down here in chaos and remembered that things should not be chaos, wanted them to go back into an orderly manner, had the blueprints of Paradise, essentially, that’s how you can put it, and formed this Earth. But this is an imitation. This is a deficiency of Paradise, and it’s especially deficient because there’s no love here. The minerals do not know love. The mud does not know love. Love doesn’t come from the bottom up, from the Demiurge up, from Jehovah up. Love, consciousness, comes from the God Above All Gods down to us in the form of a Second Order Powers. But we have forgotten, and the Demiurge forgot.

So here is a word from one of the prophets who was in touch with the God Above All Gods, giving assurance that salvation would come, that remembrance would come. The Demiurge doesn’t block the prophets because it egotistically thinks that the prophets are speaking of it. You know, the Demiurge takes personally being God, but he’s mistaken in that. He’s a lesser god, the god of this cosmos, but the God Above All Gods is the one who speaks through the prophets.

Here’s Ezekiel 36:24—26, from the New King James Version.

For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

Or as The Orthodox Jewish Bible puts it,

A lev chadásh also will I give you, and a ruach chadasháh will I put within you; and I will take away the lev ha-éven (stony heart) out of your basár, and I will give you a lev basár.

Now, when it speaks of I will give you a new heart, in Hebrew that is lev chadásh. Lev means inner self, the seat of will and moral character. Chadásh means anew, fresh, renewed, restored. So lev chadásh refers to a renewed inner disposition. A transformed moral center. A recreated will aligned with the Father rather than with stubbornness or idolatry.

And when it speaks of and put a new spirit within you, in Hebrew that word, the new spirit, is ruach chadasháh. And it means a new spirit, an awakened pneuma. And pneuma is a Gnostic term. That is the spiritual part of us. Our One Self. So the ruach chadasháh is the spirit. Ruach is spirit, breath, animating force, inner vitality. That’s what it means. Chadasháh means fresh, new, renewed. So in Ezekiel, ruach chadasháh means a new animating principle. A renewed inner drive or spiritual vitality placed within the person.

You see where I’m going with this? This is the Third Order of Powers. A new motivating force that empowers obedience and life. This cleansing of a new heart and putting a new spirit within you, ruach chadasháh. It means stripping away the meme shroud is how I generally refer to it in the Simple Explanation. Peeling off all those layers of confusion that obscure our originating Fullness. That’s the filthiness. It’s not the original sin.

We aren’t born with original sin. We are born as Second Order Powers, much loved out of the first order powers of the Fullness of God. We forget when we come down here into this material world created by the Demiurge. And then we plug into this culture around us. Think of the media and the social media and all of the lies and confusions that are spread, both purposefully meant to mislead you and confuse you, and just accidentally because people make mistakes and people say the wrong things, even when they think they’re saying the right things. So that’s the filthiness.

And the idols— these are the things that you cling to. Generally this narcissistic age we live in is an age of idols, but the idols that we worship aren’t little statues of gods. They are our exercise equipment and our bags of makeup and our, well, of course they can be influencers and they can be movie stars and television actors and musicians and sports figures and politicians. Those can be your idols if you treat them as idols, if you idolize them, if you go all weak in the knees and do anything they say. But we also have our own idols in the form of the things that we cling to and pile up around us that we buy, got to have this, got to have that, got to have this, got to have that. These are idols.

So this is a promise to cleanse us from that. In other words, to strip away your meme shroud and let the Fullness shine forth from within you. But it goes beyond that, because it says, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.

And that new heart is the lev chadásh, which is new spirit. And the new heart is lev basár, which literally means in Hebrew, a heart of flesh, a soft, receptive psyche. Oh, see, our psyche, that is not our pneuma—that’s a Gnostic term as well. We have our pneuma, which is our spiritual Fullness. We have our psyche, which is our psychological aspect—our ego lives there. And we have our hylic, which is the material to which we are bonded in this material world. So this passage promises to put a new heart within us, a lev basár, a soft, receptive psyche; that is to soften our hearts, because they’re hardened by the world and by the memes we cling to.

It says, furthermore, I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh. And the heart of stone in Hebrew is lev ha-éven, meaning heart of stone, or a hardened psyche. Going to remove that heart of stone, which is very interesting, because of course, I say that the hard rocky places, the stones are demiurgic. That’s the material level, that’s the elemental level.

So the heart of stone is the demiurgic heart that we have put inside of us, that we’re bonded to. But this passage wants to turn it into a new heart, a heart of flesh, a soft, receptive psyche, as we were originally born with—lev basár. So it says,

I will give you that new heart and put a new spirit within you, and take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

The heart of stone, lev ha-éven. And the purifying waters are what do it.

I will sprinkle clean water on you.

In Hebrew, that was literally mayim tehorím, meaning clean, purifying waters.

Jesus spoke of the purifying waters. In the New Testament, in the Gospel according to John, Chapter 3, a Pharisee named Nicodemus had sneaked out one night to speak privately with Jesus. He didn’t want anyone to know.

And Nicodemus said to Jesus, Rabbi, we know that you have come as a teacher from God, for no one can produce these signs you perform unless God is within him.

And in reply, Jesus said to him, Amen, amen, I tell you, unless someone is born from Above, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And Nicodemus says to him, how can a man be born when he is old? Jesus replied, Amen, amen, I tell you, unless a man is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed, because I’ve told you it is necessary for you to be born from Above. [Hart’s New Testament]

Jesus is speaking of the same water, the water of the spirit, that cleanses us and allows us to be born again from Above.

Later on in the book of John, Chapter 7, verse 37, Jesus stood up and said loudly,

If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and let him drink. Whoever has faith in me, just as scripture has said, out of his parts living streams of waters will flow. Now he said this in regard to the spirit, whom those who had faith in him were about to receive, for as yet there was no spirit, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. [Hart’s New Testament]

And this is speaking of the Holy Spirit—what we call the Holy Spirit—because of course we have spirit, we’re born with spirit, because we have the Fullness of God within us, the First Order of Powers. But he’s talking of the Third Order of Powers, the army of Christ that comes after Jesus is “glorified.” And glorified means risen from the dead, ascended into the sky in front of hundreds of witnesses. And glorified means that Jesus is living Above, just as we will all be living Above, in a glorified body, in the presence of the Father.

Now, the promise that Jesus referred to—he was quoting out of the Old Testament—something that all of the listeners in his audience already knew. And it’s from Isaiah 12:3 that says,

Therefore with joy will you draw water from the wells of salvation.

The water that is being drawn is this water that’s being referred to, that we’ve been discussing, out of Ezekiel 36:24—28. That is the living water, the mayim tehorím—the Holy Spirit that bathes us now within and without. We draw the living water of the Third Order Powers into us. This is why accepting the mission of the Christ into your innermost being is essential, because there’s no other way to wash away the memes, the obscurations of the world around us that confuses us and causes us to forget.

We’re born with a noble nature. We’re born as Second Order Powers, directly from the Fullness above, but we get lost in the confusion of this world that is created and run by the Demiurge. We forget our ethereal origins. We forget about the Father. We forget about the Aeons and the Fullness of God. The spirit that we’re born with becomes smothered, smothered by the worldly memes we cling to and that cling to us.

The living water that comes into our new softened heart can only come when you relinquish the ego that is causing you to hold on tightly to those memes, all those false promises that the world gives. They will not save you. They will not make you happy. They might give you a momentary piece of pleasure when something arrives in the box from Amazon on the front porch, but as soon as you’ve used it, it’s just another thing. But the living water never dies. It’s living waters from the Father flowing all the way downstream through the Son, through the Fullnesses, and only through Christ inside of us can we be washed, baptized from within to loosen the hold.

So, the lev chadásh, renew your psychic heart, captures the same teaching that the Tripartite Tractate teaches—that the psyche must be reoriented and made stable. The ruach chadashá, awakening within you the spirit that is from Above, is the same as activating the pneumatic seed, as we say in Gnosticism, not a moral reform. The lev basár, a living heart, soft, able to receive the light, receptive, this is the Tripartite Tractate’s softened, harmonized psyche, that can receive the pneumatic imprint of Christ.

And the divine seed will rise within you and rule in peace is what the Tripartite Tractate says of the pneuma ruling through the psyche once integration occurs. So, this is the Gnostic paraphrase then of Ezekiel 36:26—28:

I will renew your ego’s psychic heart, and I will awaken within you the pneumatic spirit—the One Self that flows from above. I will remove the heart hardened by the archons and the never-ending war, and I will restore your Second Order heart, soft, receptive, and able to receive the light. Through this new heart and new spirit, the divine seed of the Christ within you will rise and rule in peace.

That’s just another way we could say the phrase in Ezekiel, in a more Gnostic way.

It’s a bath, loosens the hold, washes away those memes, those sins, as the church likes to call it. But it’s more than just your mistakes and your problems. It’s all the stuff that we have around us. That is the job of the Christ, to open our eyes to our original Second Order power, to live within us, to correct our mistakes, to correct our faulty algorithms, to protect us from this demiurgic immersion that we find ourselves in, in this material world.

We Second Order Powers are the children of the Aeons of the Fullness, who are themselves the Totality of the Son. The Third Order Powers are the army of the Christ, who represents all of the Powers of the ethereal plane, individually and collectively working for our redemption.
Step aside. Take your ego off the throne. Take the Demiurge off the throne, if you’ve enthroned it. Put down your idols. Push away your possessions, at least long enough to allow the Third Order Powers to come in. Ask the Christ to come in and wash you with the Holy Spirit. Invite the Holy Spirit, the army of the Third Order of Powers, into your organism, literally, and it will cleanse you. It will wash you. Walk in the Spirit of God. Let your eyes be opened to the truth.

We’ll talk more about this again. Until then, God bless us all, and onward and upward.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.Name *First
Last

Email *
Stripe Credit Card *

Choose your item *Item A - $10.00
Item B - $25.00
Item C - $50.00

Total$0.00

Submit

Every once in a while I like to go back and share with you the original scriptures out of the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi from which I derive these teachings. So this week will be scripture-heavy. Don’t worry if the language is unwieldy or unfamiliar. You’ll get the hang of it.

The original economy was that of the hierarchy of the Fullness, wherein every Aeon knew its place, position, and duties for cooperative overall functioning.

The Aeons of the Fullness dream as one of Paradise.
Each of the Fullnesses lived in a state of joy, benevolence, and harmonious agreement, giving glory to the Father and never to each other or to themselves, according to the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi, verse 86.

The Second Order of Powers was created to establish a new economy to replace the deficiency that had arisen as a result of the Fall of Logos. Logos and the Fullness brought forth these little ones of the Second Order so they could receive the life-giving light born from the thought of brotherly love of the preexistent Fullnesses, in contrast to the phantoms that had arisen from the Fall. These powers of remembrance resembled the Aeons whose likenesses they were, and they were in harmony with themselves and with others of their kind. And as you know by now, the Second Order of Powers is every living thing that is on this planet Earth, and indeed, the entire cosmos—all of creation, all of the flora and fauna, all of the living things, including us humans.

The restored pleroma of Logos and the Hierarchy of the Fullness conceive a new fruit called 2nd Order Powers. The Fullness is the 1st Order.

The Second Order of Powers resembled their parents in the Fullness, each one of them being a small impress of one of the figures. These were no larger than those of the imitation, but they came into the world with a better disposition, reflecting the qualities and powers of the Fullnesses. [Tripartite Tractate, verse 83]

The new economy of the Second Order of Powers reflected a different method of doing business from their parents in the Fullness. In the new economy, our cosmos, the powers vied for position and authority within a limited space known as the boundary. Here, those of the imitation who continued to wholeheartedly embrace the shadows left over from the Fall actively fought against those of the remembrance.

Never-ending War

For their part, those of the remembrance forgot all about the values of the Fullness, due to the law of mutual combat they were enacting. The new powers acquired the same lust for domination and all of the other passions of this sort, and wound up acting against itself on account of its rage. It was during this endless war that a myriad of various kinds of matter and all sorts of powers were mixed with one another, and in great number. [Tripartite Tractate, verses 84 and 85]

Clearly another solution was required if peace were to enter the deficiency. Remember that none of this was due to an error of planning, rather these steps were all necessary to bring about an economy still to come. The new solution was the Christ.

For this reason, then, it is wrong to condemn the movement of the Word as the cause that made an ordained economy come to pass. The Aeons of the Fullness took upon themselves the Fall that had happened as if it were their own, with concern, goodness, and great kindness, for the one who had become deficient could be made perfect in no other way except by the Fullness of the Father. [Tripartite Tractate, verse 86]

And so, the Aeons of the Fullness, every one individually and all of them collectively gave glory in unison to their Father while praying for help for the deficiency. They brought forth one that combined every attribute of the All manifested in the image of the Father of whom they had been thinking when they gave glory and prayed for help. This one was called the Son of His Will and of the Good Pleasure of the All. It is the knowledge of the Father who wished to become known. It is also described as holding authority vested in Him from the beginning and the power needed to execute it. [Tripartite Tractate, verses 87 and 88]

The Aeons not only produced a singular fruit reflecting the Father, but that fruit also reflected their own individual countenances and aspects from their positions in the hierarchy of the Fullness. In this manner, they went forth in a form that consisted of many forms, so that the one whom they were going to help should see those to whom he had prayed for help as well as the one who brought it to him. [verse 87]

Those redeemed by the light were made whole and complete. Those who were now enlightened felt the power of the Redeemer inside themselves, being together with Him, sharing His suffering, relieving Him little by little, making Him grow, raising Him up. [verse 90]

[The Redeemed] were produced as an army for Him, as for a king, in which those who belong to this thought share the command and are united in agreement. He also sowed in him, invisibly, a word designed for understanding, and gave him the power to detach and dispel from himself those who were disobedient to him. Those of the imitation, on the other hand, were unprepared for the light, for they had come into being out of darkness and could not comprehend it. To them the light came as a brief terrifying flash, a leap and a blow, that drove them deeper into the shadows of the abyss. To them this utter darkness was home. [Tripartite Tractate, verse 89]

The Aeon, Logos, who had Fallen and then abandoned the deficiency he had created, decided to pray that the fixed economy might attain all those who had gone forth from him, including those still clinging to the imitation. In this manner Logos was also made right from the Fall, as those of the deficiency attained the economy of the ALL, and the Second Order of Powers united with the knowledge that had been given them. [verse 91]

So those of the deficiency were found worthy of becoming rulers over the unspeakable darkness as their own property and the lot that fell to them. This is what he granted them, so that they too might become useful for the economy that was to be, and of which they were oblivious. And so it came to pass that every grace and food that was contemplated through prayer and the ALL came to be. For the word greatly increased mutual cooperation and expectant hope, and they experienced happiness, deep rest, and undefiled pleasures to the extent each was able to embrace them. [verse 92]

Now what this is saying in Simple Explanation terms is that the fruit of the ALL and the Father becomes another fractal iteration of the ethereal Consciousness. The Christ Principle is a perfect fractal iteration of the Father’s Consciousness that takes into account the new information arising from the goings-on in our bounded space. The Father, the Son, and the Aeons of the Fullness have just amended the primary algorithm of this universe to include up-to-date data specific to each individual unit of consciousness in our space-time continuum. This new code represents patches to the fragmentary error code of the deficiency in order to end the stalemate and re-establish harmony and proper functioning of the economy.

When the Tripartite Tractate speaks of “forms consisting of many forms,” this refers to the nested fractal hierarchies that make up all of the life in of our universe. Our Universal Unit of Consciousness is continually pouring in information, values, love, and coherence. The Christ came into the world to redeem all of creation through His body and His blood, literally, because His body and His blood instantiate the entirely perfect Fullness of the All.

The cross bridges Fullness to Earth, neighbor to neighbor.
Salvation comes not only to those of us on Earth, but also to the Fullness above, and to Logos in particular, the Aeon whose Fall brought creation into existence. The face of the revealed Christ, quote,

possessed the Word of the Son together with His essence, His power, and His form. He was the one He desired and delighted in. He was the one who had been prayed for in love. This Aeon was light and a desire to set aright, an openness for instruction and an eye designed for vision, qualities that it had from those above. Moreover, it was wisdom for His thought against the ones who were placed lower in the economy, a word for speech and other perfecting things of this kind.

Those who are redeemed by the Christ are unshackled from the chains that bind the material and psychical orders to this world, so much so, in fact, that they form a new Third Order of Powers, the spiritual ones. The redeemed are also known as the Assembly of Salvation, the Bride, the Church, and the Elect, or the Election. [Tripartite Tractate, verse 93 and 94]

The Tripartite Tractate mentions the name of Jesus only a couple of times, and the Savior and the Christ many more times than that.

And, of course, the entire book begins with long discourses concerning the nature of the Father and the Son. Here is what it says about Jesus at this point in the story.

Because the seed of the promise about Jesus Christ had been deposited, whose revelation and unification we have ministered to, this promise now enabled instruction and a return to that which they had been from the beginning, that of which they possessed a drop inciting them to return to it, which is what is called redemption. And that means to be released from captivity and to obtain freedom. The captivity is of those who were slaves of ignorance, which reigned in its own territories. [verse 117]

So the Gnostic Gospel claims that we humans, and all of creation, are all children, or fruit, of the spiritual realm of the Fullness, redeemed by the body and the blood of Christ in the form of a drop of remembrance, a seed of the promise that now enabled instruction and a return to that which we had been from the beginning. Humans were endowed with reason so they could remember their true inheritance and repent of their tenacious claim to material life. This redemption comes easier to some than to others.

The Tripartite describes this as humanity coming to exist as three different types with regard to its essence: a spiritual type, a psychological type, and a material type, reproducing the pattern of the three kinds of disposition of the Word from which sprung the material, the psychological, and spiritual beings.

The spiritual kind of human is like light from light and like spirit from spirit. It received knowledge straight away from the revelation. When he remembered that which is superior and prayed for salvation, he has salvation without any uncertainty. And these are the prophets, the evangelists, the teachers of the word, whose job it is to help their brothers and sisters to remember the Father above.

The psychological kind, however, being light from fire, they tarried before recognizing the one who had appeared to it, and still more before rushing to him in faith. This type is content to have a pledge of assurance of things to come. They’re content to have a promise of a future heaven. Those who rid themselves of the lust for domination that was given to them temporarily and for short periods, who give glory and abandon their rage, will be recompensed for their humility by being allowed to endure indefinitely. [verses 118 and 119]

These are most of us folks who feel we’re doing just fine, leading a mostly moral and comparatively upright life, good family people, good citizens, realizing nobody’s perfect, we try to be helpful to neighbors. The Tripartite Tractate goes on to say that

The material kind, however, is alien in every respect. It is like darkness that avoids the shining light because it is dissolved by its manifestation, for it did not accept his coming, and is even filled with hatred against the Lord because he revealed himself. They are those who arrogantly pride themselves in their vainglorious lust, who love temporary glory, who are oblivious to the fact that the power they have has been entrusted to them only for a limited time and period, and for that reason have not acknowledged that the Son of God is the Lord of the All and the Savior, and who have failed to rid themselves either of their fury or their way of imitating those who are evil. They will receive judgment for their ignorance and their senselessness, and that judgment is suffering. [verses 120 and 121]

I would describe these material people as proud atheists with no fear of God because they reject sober contemplation of God. Others may proudly call themselves scientists, still others academics. Some may be politicians, industrialists, tech giants, entertainers, or philandering priests. They are successful materialists who have no inclination to replace their ego with God. They mock believers, believing themselves superior to those poor deluded fools.

Through Christ and the Third Order Powers, restoration came to the deficiency below. Christ’s incarnation in the body of Jesus and the spilling of his blood onto the earth brought the ALL and the Aeons of the Fullness face to face with the material agony of life, suffering, and death.

The final restoration, however, will take place after the ALL is manifested in him who is the Son, the one who is the redemption, who is the road toward the incomprehensible Father, who is the return to the preexistent, and after the members of the ALL have been manifested in him who is truly the inconceivable, ineffable, invisible, and ungraspable one, so that the ALL obtains its redemption. [verses 123-124]

The most accurate interpretation of these verses is that the angels were literally inside the body of Jesus, forming a community in him, living and dying with him. Indeed, all of our karyotic cells work as an integrated community inside each of us, devoted to taking care of the needs of our bodies, and we are fractals of the ALL.

As for the true baptism into which the members of the ALL descend, and where they come into being, there is no other baptism except the one, and that is the redemption, which takes place in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, after confession of faith has been made in those names, and after one has believed that the things one has been told are real. [Tripartite Tractate, verse 127]

Where we Gnostics differ from conventional modern Christianity is that you will have the opportunity to repent and be redeemed during your judgment period, your life review, after this physical body passes away. For then you will come face to face with the truth of it all and there will be no denying it. But until then, until and unless one repents and acknowledges our ethereal origins and ultimate return, there will be suffering brought about by our own ignorance.

The end goal of redemption is return to the Father’s abode, that Paradise initially dreamed by the Fullness, where there is no death, no disease, no disappointment, and no deficiencies, that paradise where Christ is King and peace reigns supreme, and there is only cooperation, fellowship, and true love. In paradise there is nothing but life, and so all the grass is always green, the flowers blossom endlessly, and every soul that has ever lived lives happily with their family and their friends.

Even those who are brought forth from the desire of lust for domination, having inside themselves the seed that is the lust for domination, they will receive the recompense of good things if they have worked together with those who are predisposed toward good things, and provided they decide to do so deliberately, and are willing to abandon their vain love of temporary glory so as to do the command of the Lord of glory, and instead of that small temporary honor they will inherit the eternal kingdom. [verse 131]

And in my opinion, this is like elected officials whose lust for dominion gets them elected into office, yet they work not just to keep themselves reelected and in power, but they’re actually working toward the good of the ALL. So you can have a combination of domination and lust for power and yet work in conjunction with those who are redeemed and those who want only the good for the ALL. That’s the way Congress ought to work.

As for those of the imitation who embrace the darkness and deny the light, even they will obtain direct vision, so they will no longer have to believe only on account of a small word produced by a voice that this is how things are. For the restoration back to that which was is a single restoration. Even if some are exalted because of this economy, having been set up as causes for the things that happened, unfolding numerous physical forces and taking pleasure in them, they, angels as well as humans, will obtain the kingdom, the confirmation, and the salvation. These too will be provided with dwelling places where they will dwell eternally after they have renounced the downward attraction of deficiency, and the power of the Fullness has pulled them upward on account of the great generosity and the sweetness of the pre-existent Aeon. [verse 133]

The only forms banished to the outer darkness are those attributes of the deficiency that did not exist from the beginning, the shadows and phantoms of the imitation that bring nothing but death and destruction. These are shadows of the Aeons, so when the light comes, the light dispels the shadows and they vanish.

And there you have the completion of Gnostic cosmology. Tell me what you think. Let’s start a conversation.

Onward and upward, and God bless us all.