What Is Gnosticism It Is A Spiritual Tradition That Rivaled Early Christianity And Has Been Given New Impetus By The Discovery In 1945 In A Cave In Egypt Of 53 Gnostic Textsのソースを表示

What is Gnosticism? It is a spiritual tradition that rivaled early Christianity and has been given new impetus by the discovery in 1945 in a cave in Egypt of 53 Gnostic texts. Not only do these shed new light on Gnosticism but they also reveal that the Christian church in its infancy encompassed many views and was very different from what it later became.<br><br>The Gnostics drew their ideas from various sources, including Christianity. Their main tenet was that spirituality is a question of knowing (gnosis being Greek for knowledge) rather than faith. It is through personal experience that we come to the divine, not through dogma and priests, and the world will only be transformed if we all make an effort to transform ourselves-it is no good waiting for  [https://www.kynghidongduong.vn/tours/tour-du-lich-ha-giang-cao-nguyen-da-dong-van-3-ngay-2-dem.html kynghidongduong.vn] a divine miracle. One of their stranger ideas was that the real god is hidden, and the world has been created by a false god. Everything material is therefore bad and humankind is a divine spark trapped in a body. So what is Gnosticism, Gnosis is a Greek word for knowledge, and in Gnosticism (and religion in general) it refers to awareness, experience and knowledge of the presence of God. It also frequently refers to self-awareness, as one realizes and recognizes the divine spark within their mortal shell.<br><br><br><br>Gnosticism, along with other heresies, was crushed by the early Christian Church, with vast numbers of books being destroyed, including a great library at Alexandria in Egypt in the year 387, and until the discovery of the Gnostic texts, our knowledge of it came largely from what its detractors had written. It was the Gnostic attitude to women as well as their attitude to priests that outraged the establishment. The Gnostics held that the feminine aspect of god, which they called Sophia, meaning wisdom, is as important as the masculine. The Gnostic texts, some of them gospels which predate the New Testament, present a picture of Mary Magdalene as one of the most important figures in the early Christian movement. One scandalized 2ndcentury churchman said of Gnostic women: "They teach, they engage in discussion; they exorcise; they cure." Not only that, but they performed rites of baptism as well.<br><br>Gnostics divided people into three kinds-fleshly, partially enlightened, and spiritual-seeing themselves, of course,  [https://www.kynghidongduong.vn/tours/tour-du-lich-ha-giang-cao-nguyen-da-dong-van-3-ngay-2-dem.html tour hà giang] as spiritual. In contrast to this elitism, however, their meetings were open to all people ("even Pagans" as the previously quoted churchman put it), and they drew lots at each meeting for leaders. Riane Eisler, in The Chalice and the Blade, suggests that the suppression of Gnosticism is just one more example of the destructive dominator or "blade" culture taking over from the partnership or "chalice" culture which served humanity so well during its early millennia (see goddess).<br><br>The Gnostics hid their texts because they were a threat to the emerging Church. They are obviously still a threat since their publication was delayed for over 45 years after they were found. You can read many things into Gnosticism- mysticism, feminism, egalitarianism-but, without doubt, it represents a lost facet of our spiritual heritage. As one bishop put it (quoted in Kindred Spirit magazine in [http://www.fool.com/search/solr.aspx?q=reaction reaction] to The Jesus Mysteries, a book about the lost mystical aspects of Christianity by Tim Freke and Peter Gandy), Christian orthodoxy "is not orthodoxy because it is right, but because it won."<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>For FREE reports, ebooks, videos, downloads, news and articles on esoteric knowledge, spirituality, the paranormal, conspiracies, new age, 2012 and the new world order come to: website Is Gnosticism