Gnosticism, one of the most mystical movements in our history, has been buried and forgotten centuries after the spread of Christianity. This vision is now slowly re-awakening and winning people’s hearts. Maybe it is because it tells the story that humanity itself needs to listen again, and to remind us of our true nature…
“This is the basic insight of the Gnostics, the one known to the great mystical thinkers of all traditions: the divine spark is within each human being.” ~Lesley Hazleton
According to Gnostics, which means mystical knowledge, there is an ultimate truth when it comes to the creation of the world and human suffering as a consequence of the deception we are trapped in.
This article, covers the following topics :
Sophia, the Gnostic Goddess and the Ultimate Truth
The ultimate truth is that Goddess Sophia (meaning wisdom in Greek), the creator of this Universe, in her intention to shape this world, wanted to create species that would have enormous freedom to play and explore, to enjoy, to feel pleasure, and to create by themselves anything they wanted.
Sophia did not separate herself from the thing she created.She was not an impersonal God that dictated what was right and wrong. Sophia was so fascinated and passionate about the creatures she dreamt about, that during the creation process she could not step away from her project as other Gods would do. Instead, she wanted to be involved in her creation and observe her creatures, and so she fell from the edge of the Universe i.e. the Pleroma, the totality of divine powers, full perfection.
During this fall, she split herself in two parts; her most irrational passion became the world of matter – the Universe, and her higher part remained celestial.
Nevertheless, she did not know that her fascination and involvement for her creatures would also have consequences. Due to her irrational passion and in her fall from the Pleroma, she cast the shadow of evil, incarnated and got entangled in the world of matter controlled by Demiurge.
The Demiurge, according to Gnosticism, is the entity that possessed the world of matter and this entity was driven by greed and envy. The Gnostics believed that this entity wanted to take credit for the world Sophia created, claiming to be the true God, and wanted humans to worship him as the true creator of the Universe.
He wanted to enslave the human race, and keep them distracted from finding the Truth that everything in this world had the divine spark of Sophia and that all humans had this divine print because Sophia is within all of us. Humans are beings of energy living in a body, and that we are much more than our physical boundaries, and knowing this is where our potential lied to transcend our limits created by our belief system.
According to the Gnostics, as Demiurge had control over the world of matter, he tried to suppress humans as much as possible in their psychic power and visions. He wanted humans to believe that the only true reality that existed was this world of matter and what we could see with our physical eyes.
How Gnosticism explained the development of our society
He could controlthe human mind, especially of those who sought powerbased on feelings of greed, envy and fear. He immersed himself in humanity’s belief system firstlyas the monotheistic and patriarchal religions that took shape on Earth and later on modern societies were built based on fear of sin, and guilt.
This new God dictated that only through suffering the doors of salvation will open to humans. He suppressed the original sexuality and pleasure of humanity – as opposed to the way Sophia wanted her species to experience the world.
The original religion of the Earth, since the Palaeolithic and Neolithic, was based on the Goddess and the symbiosis of sexuality and spirituality, sacred and mundane, humans and nature. This ancient religion was slowly repressed and persecuted as new forms of monotheistic religions started to have more power. The original gnostics, pagans, witches and shamans – all of those who worshipped the Earth and Sophia – were tortured, burned and killed during the beginning of the 1st century A.D. and later.
The question that also modern gnostics think of is: what if hunger for power, greed and envy controlled the mind of humans carrying those atrocities? Which true God or Goddess would have wanted those terrible things to happen? For the gnostic was clear: only a fake God controlled human mind through a stage of anger, fear, and guilt.
“The true Gnostic understands that there is a difference between religious activity and spiritual truth.” ~David Tresemer
The spiritual truth according to Gnostics
As the gnostics believed and also the pagans celebrated in their ceremonies, the presence of Sophia within all of us on Earth. The Earth itself is Gaia, the Goddess creator of Life that wanted us to feel joy and pleasure.
Societies that were connected to Nature and the Earth did not allow this new wave of belief system to dictate their way of living, because for them the doors of salvation and to the divine would open through joy, respect to nature, collaboration, pray and love. Consequently, many gnostics died defending what was true to them.
The old religious system fell apart, and greed-driven corporations, consumerism and totalitarian governments took the place of the new God. This was interpreted by the Gnostics as the new way of the Demiurge that kept us blind to our true nature – our origin as creatures of Goddess Sophia.
If we look at the world we live in, we see how humans have been exploiting the Earth, digging her minerals and precious substances with machines without any respect or thought of sustainability. Technology has been a big step for us to allow faster communication and have higher life standards. We have freedom to create, as Sophia wanted us to do.
But are we really following her original desire to use our full potential and creativity, or have we gone in the wrong direction?
The lungs of our planet are being destroyed by continuous deforestation and exploitation of the land to get more profit. Oceans are being contaminated, the air is polluted, and wars continue to ravage our world. Is this the consequence of the disconnection to the Goddess, as it was in ancient traditions? Have humans lost their connection to the spirits of Nature and finally to the divine spark which is the print of Sophia, the origin of our Creation?
Perhaps we are unconsciously feeding our greed and allowing the Demiurge to take over our inner mystical origins and forgetting the sacredness of the Earth and ourselves. Is this the consequence of our belief that the world of matter is the ultimate reality, worshipping materialism and closing our spiritual eyes?
“We are in times of great wings, swiping across our world. May these wings swipe away what we not longer need, and bring us back home to our true selves and all that is.” ~ Medicine Song
Nevertheless, as society is changing at a fast pace, we are now in a new wave of awareness. Our own consciousness is evolving, as more people are reconnecting to the energy of the Earth, to the compassion for all living beings, to the unconditional love to others and the healing power that is available when humans remember the divine spark that is within them and all creatures.
As the Gnostics predicted, humanity will wake up and realise the deception that has trapped them for a long time, impeding them to encounter the Goddess, the primordial Mother and force of the Universe, Sophia, which is the real longing of the soul and desire of human beings.
“I am the Queen, source of thought, Knowledge itself. You do not know Me, yet you dwell in me.” ~ Ancient Gnostic texts
As the Gnostics and pagans believed, the most beautiful thing ever created is the Earth – Sophia herself materialised. We humans spend multiple lives trying to remember that we are part of Her as She is in each one of us.
We have forgotten this Truth, and it is time for us to wake up from the dream we are living, to acknowledge our true desires, to find happiness within, to connect again to the source of Infinite Love, through healing the Earth and giving back to her all the Love she gave us when she sacrificed her own divinity to create this living universe and finally, us.
Image Sources:
Art by Helena Nelson Reed
