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Thread: The Cathars: Gnostic Catholic Opposition in the Middle Ages

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    Sweden Avalon Member Metaphor's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Cathars: Gnostic Catholic Opposition in the Middle Ages

    Quote Posted by Delight (here)
    Several videos about the Cathars. I have decided that the Cathars have returned. Clif High mentioned the Cathars in his video this week.
    This reminded me of the Iron Maiden song Montségur, it has the line "To stand with the Cathars, to die and be free" wich possibly refers to the fact that Catholics in Bezier were given oppurtunity to leave the siege but refused and fought with the Cathars.

    If they have returned, I will also stand with the Cathars.



    Lyrics:
    I stand alone in this desolate space
    In death they are truly alive
    Massacred innocence, evil took place
    The angels were burning inside
    Centuries later I wonder why
    What secret that they took to their grave
    Still burning heretics under our skies
    Religion's still burning inside

    At the gates and the walls of Montségur
    Blood on the stones of the citadel


    As we kill them all so god will know his own
    The innocents died for the pope on his throne
    Catholic greed and its paranoid zeal
    Curse of the grail and the blood of the cross
    Templar believers with blood on their hands
    Joined in the chorus to kill on command
    Burned at the stake for their soul's liberty
    To stand with the cathars to die and be free
    The book of old testament crippled and black
    Satan his weapon is lust
    Leaving this evil damnation of flesh
    Back to the torture of life
    The perfect ones willingly died at the stake
    And all of their followers slain
    As for the knowledge of god they had claimed
    Religion's still burning inside

    At the gates and the walls of Montségur
    Blood on the stones of the citadel

    As we kill them all so god will know his own
    The innocents died for the pope on his throne
    Catholic greed and its paranoid zeal
    Curse of the grail and the blood of the cross
    Templar believers with blood on their hands
    Joined in the chorus to kill on command
    Burned at the stake for their soul's liberty
    Still burning heretics under our skies
    As we kill them all so god will know his own
    Laugh at the darkness and in god we trust
    The eye of the triangle smiling with sin
    No passover feast for the cursed within
    Facing the sun as they went to their grave
    Burn like a dog or you live like a slave
    Death is the price for your soul's liberty
    To stand with the cathars to die and be free

    At the gates and the walls of Montségur...
    Last edited by Metaphor; 21st December 2021 at 22:54.

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    UK Avalon Founder Bill Ryan's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Cathars: Gnostic Catholic Opposition in the Middle Ages

    Quote Posted by wondering (here)
    The Cathars fascinate me, and I feel very drawn to them. I really look forward to seeing this - thanks, Anna70.
    Just a note here (which may be an obvious thought for some!) — if someone feels an unaccountably strong personal connection to a particular historical group, location or event, it really is quite possible that in one of their past lives they were part of it, and were deeply involved.


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    Default Re: The Cathars: Gnostic Catholic Opposition in the Middle Ages

    Interesting connection of Cathars to the Tarot and the "journey" we all are making. Holding the knowledge and teaching of the Divine in plain sight.....

    Cathars and Tarot
    by Talk Gnosis




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    Default Re: The Cathars: Gnostic Catholic Opposition in the Middle Ages

    Just listening to this fascinating vid from Thomas Sheridan and Neil McDonald, who have co-written a book on Rennes-le-Château. They're not giving too much away but they're suggesting that the solution to the mystery of Bérenger Saunière is not what was put out by the book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.

    One surprising fact that they mentioned is that Rennes-le-Château was not always a small sleepy village, but a large town with about 30,000 inhabitants, and that you can still see the remnants of the houses all the way down the hill.

    The book has been published by Lulu, only £10 + p&p; just the right treat for me on payday!
    https://www.lulu.com/shop/thomas-she...e=1&pageSize=4


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    Default Re: The Cathars: Gnostic Catholic Opposition in the Middle Ages

    Hi Brigantia. Thanks for the link and info about the book "Rennes-le-Chateau". I think I will order it too.

    The visit to this place was quite an event: climbing Monségur, being in the Magdala tower, the very special small church, and of course all what is being said and written about Béringer Saunière.

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    Default Re: The Cathars: Gnostic Catholic Opposition in the Middle Ages

    Clif High is talking a lot about the Cathari and bumping this thread with what he said about his family lineage and the Cathar ethos.

    I feel very alligned with what I know of the Cathars.The ethos that Clif High describes is what i consider Good.


    Source: https://www.rumble.com/video/v118drz/?pub=4

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    Default Re: The Cathars: Gnostic Catholic Opposition in the Middle Ages

    The video I posted above is really valuable. He also talks about biophotonics which IMO we need to learn about. Coherence and incoherence are much better polarities to me than Good/Evil. If we become COHERENT, we build a field. Incoherence strips us of power IMO. IMO that means we become parasitic on our environment, stealing the charge we need which is being drained...it's a cycle.

    I am not sure if the following article has been posted? If our souls were imprisoned in clay, IMO we can infuse the body state with the TRUTH AND ABSORB the REAL LIGHT that is not falsely offered. This TRUE light is plasma based. We ususally cannot use the info but WE are plasma. If we know we are that, how may we imprisoned in the last analysis?

    I actally FEEL I am infused with the Plasma of Creator beyond the "material" realm. I am not at all planning to sojourn in hell again. IMO we don't have to be GOOD to be able to leave this hell but be infused with LIGHT and then we will naturally be Good in the mean time. Good is IMO whatever is COHERENT.

    Obviously we are in a war. It has been called a war between good and evil by many. I personally do think this world is either hell or heaven depending on where your consciousness dwells. For instance, in the paradox where all lies become real if we accept them, we may take the offer of what to dwell on and proclaim what WE want to be so, IS SO and in this realm it is FOR US.

    I go with the evidence that we are immortal beings in these clay bodies. We are programmed to make this world by imagination. We have choice. Some are absolutely devoted to the material realm. That is their path.

    IMO the teachings of religion do give true inklings but disavow our capacity... calling us fallen. This realm passes away so one had best choose what also will be FOREVER and IMO that is what we learn of OUR OWN truth. I have been asking along the way for the Apocalypse and by golly, it looks like I am having it revealed.

    Quote William Henry
    Posted on May 18, 2018




    THE GOOD PEOPLE: BACKGROUND

    The philosophy of the “pure”, or “Good People”, as the Cathars were called, was derived from the first Christians. These were the actual family and followers of Jesus. They claimed to have received a transmission of a Christ ‘vibration’ that was passed from Jesus to his followers shoulder to shoulder to shoulder on down to the Cathars. They combined this ‘infusion’ of light with insights gained from the resurrected Jesus and what is known as Christian gnosis or illumination.

    This teaching is a mixture of Jewish (Essene) mysticism and the esoteric wisdom of the Middle East and was collated first by Mary Magdalene, and then by Mani, the 2nd century Persian prophet, and passed on to the Cathars.

    At its core, this teaching is about ascension or our return to perfection, holiness and wholeness. It is based on the premise that humans were originally whole, holy and complete angelic light beings and that we have fallen into a dark and diabolical world created by an alien entity called Satan.

    The Cathars believed this dark angel made or manufactured the human body out of clay and infused it with blessed souls from heaven imprisoning them for eternity.

    Creation of the human body from clay is a miraculous birth theme that recurs throughout ancient religions and mythologies. All of them infer an extraterrestrial intervention in human affairs.

    Specifically Genesis 2:7, which says:

    “And the Lord God formed man of the dust/clay of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

    Clay is made up of tiny crystals which when fed with water are capable of growing, splitting off and giving rise to identical (or near-identical crystals).

    The latest theory is that clay – which is at its most basic, a combination of minerals in the ground – acts as a breeding laboratory for tiny molecules and chemicals which it ‘absorbs like a sponge’. Over billions of years, chemicals confined in those spaces could have carried out the complex reactions that formed proteins, DNA and eventually all the machinery that makes a living cell work.

    You may have heard it said that we are shifting from carbon-based bodies to crystalline-based bodies. These stories are literally saying humans originally had crystalline bodies. Then, we lost them.

    This story mirrors the Greek myth of Pandora, the first human being who was artificially created by Hephaestos, the god of technology. Pandora was crafted from the clay of the earth. She had no soul until Athena came along and blew one into her.

    The Cathars believed that good souls would incarnate in a body that would be more capable of returning them/us to our original state of being as angels. This means they would be more capable of shifting — or perfecting — the body into a higher, and lighter, form.

    The bad souls imprisoned in the ‘lesser, denser’ human body would reincarnate in a body much darker than the one before. This body comes pre-loaded or programmed with the sins of the past (rather than being burdened with just the sins created in its present life).

    For the Cathars this new ‘dark’ body and the prison planet it dwelled in was Hell.

    This darker body is our current model. No matter what color skin you wrap it in the current model of the human body is the one the Cathars warned us about.

    Clearly, this body is weighted down with environmental and spiritual pressures no other humans had to contend with. To compound this assault, it is now the target of genetic and technological augmentation that will transform it from an organic state of being to an inorganic technological one that is nothing more than a puppet, like Pinocchio, wired to the Internet of Things.

    For (modern day) Cathars, Transhumanism is the continuation of a metamorphosis of the human body begun long ago and which would come to fruition in a later age (ours?) and is the greatest possible disaster ever to confront humanity.

    For Transhumanists it is the fulfillment of their version of the quest to perfect the human body.

    It all began in the book of Genesis where we learn humanity was imprisoned in human flesh by the Old Testament God, Yahweh, who punished Adam and Eve for eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge. Before their ‘fall’ Adam and Eve had perfect bodies of light that resembled the angel’s light bodies. After, their eviction from Eden they/we were cast into bodies of flesh.

    Adam and Eve’s’perfect’ bodies of light are described as robes or garments of light.

    Louis Ginzberg, in his Legends of the Jews, says that Adam’s garment is identical to the celestial robes of the righteous in the Jewish and Christian mystery tradition. It is described as a “shining garment” or “garment of light”.

    Ginzberg says it was of extraordinary brilliance and splendor and possessed of supernatural qualities. In the Dead Sea Scrolls Community Rule, the faithful were to receive “life everlasting, and a crown of glory and a robe of honor, amid light perpetual). In 1 Enoch the righteous “shall have been clothed with garments of glory, and these shall be the garments of life from the Lord of Spirits: and your garments shall not grow old (1 Enoch 62:16).

    In order to escape this prison world, and its children of darkness, we must ‘change our clothes’ and trade or upgrade our ‘fallen’ earthly/biological flesh for our original celestial flesh or the light bodies of the angels.

    THE MIGHTY ONES OF RENOWN

    According to Cathar belief, Yahweh/Satan is actually Hell’s angel and his mission is to control humanity by keeping us eternally locked in flesh. The goal is immortality on earth.

    Jesus was sent as a cosmic emissary to show us the way to transcend human flesh and return to our original, true nature by remaking our bodies of light. The goal is ascension to a celestial realm (more in a later post).

    Satan’s strategy is revealed in the strange days when Noah lived (which will be mirrored in the end times) when the fallen angels created a hybrid race of humans. In Genesis 6:1-4 we read:

    And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.

    And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

    There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

    The sons of God are the fallen angels who mated with human woman, producing giant offspring, known as Nephilim or Mighty Men of Renown. These were hybrid entities, that were part human and part angelic, and (some) were under Satan’s control. This being was intended to have a shelf life of 120 years.

    They are called ‘Mighty Men’ because they possessed a transmittable garment that gave them super powers, including invisibility, superhuman strength and the ability to walk between worlds. This garment has a spiritual component. As I discussed in The Watchers: Lost Secrets of Ascension, Resurrection and Perfection, a breakaway group of these angels taught humans the art of spiritual ascension.

    In Genesis 6 we have more than just another example of the practice of genetic manipulation and modification described in ancient mythology. What it describes is the goal at the heart of the present day scientific and technological Transhumanist agenda : to create a new suit of skin for humanity composed of super advanced technology and to take total control of the thoughts and actions of this entity.

    Does this mean today’s Transhumanists are yesterday’s fallen angels and Transhuman technology is the ‘evil’ product of Satanists?

    The Cathars would say YES.

    Is history repeating itself in the form of the Transhuman quest to merge us with machines and give us souped up skin?

    Again, the Cathars would say YES.

    This is part of the prophecy of the Second Coming.

    In Matt 24:37 Jesus says:

    As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

    What this means is that when Jesus returns so will his angels…and Satan’s angels (referred to as the army of the AntiChrist).

    The biblical flood was sent as a premeditated attack to destroy the Nephilim giants and to punish the angels who committed the illicit hybridization and make an example of them so that no other angels would ever attempt this again.

    Well, until now.

    Mass human transformation into a hybrid man-chine is the goal of global elite who are advocating our merger with ‘godless’ Artificial Intelligence as a way to ‘save’ the human race.

    But that is not what the Essenes, Christian gnostics and Cathars advocated. They advocated activating our ‘Ascension Intelligence’ and joining the angels who sought to aid humanity in its ascension.

    PERFECTION : THE ANTIDOTE TO TRANSHUMANISM

    In the Book of Genesis Noah escaped the Nephilim hybridization that had infected humanity. He was chosen/saved to carry on and re-start humanity after the flood because he was a righteous one and a believer in God.

    More, he was “perfect in his generations” (Genesis 6:9). The Hebrew word for “perfect” in that verse is tamiym, which means “complete, whole” and is a reference to Noah’s health and physical condition. On one level this means that his genetic bloodline and ancestry was 100% pure human.

    In my view, and more importantly, the word also describes his metaphysical condition. He was different from the hybrid humans.

    How so?

    As I have written and presented extensively since 2006, I look at it through the lens of Tibetan Buddhism where the term “perfect body” refers to our ascended Rainbow Light Body.

    Unlike Gilgamesh, the Sumerian hybrid ‘super man’, who was 2/3 divine and 1/3 human, Noah was 100% human, perfect, whole, holy, complete. Wholeness is symbolized by a circle and a circle is 360 degrees. In this way Gilgamesh was 240 out of 360. Noah was 360. This means he was divine…and a perfect human. I know it may sound strange to think of Noah as a being of light, but if we interpret the word tamiym in its fullest meaning that is exactly what it says.

    As a perfect human, Noah would have aligned with a race later referred to by Jesus in the Secret Book of John as Perfect Humans.

    “I have come to teach you about what is, and what was and what will be.…and to understand the invisible world and the world that is visible and the immovable race of the perfect humanity.”

    Next, Jesus encourages John to lift up his face, listen and understand what he is saying and to “proclaim it to your kindred spirits, those who are from the immovable race of the perfect Human.”

    Jesus is clearly telling John there is a distinct race of humans — Perfect Light Humans. Noah is a member of this race and probably not by birth, but rather by a light body practice which he mastered. The Cathar perfecti practiced, and mastered, affecting this transformation.

    Jesus tells John that understanding these concepts will be difficult for those who are not part of this race (i.e. hybrid transhumans who are programmed to ignore or not accept these teachings). Christ’s mysteries belong to the Perfect Light Humans. (Jesus also tells John he encouraged Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.)

    Further, we are told the perfect ones accompanied Noah the Righteous on the ark. They covered themselves with a cloud of light. Recalling that after his ‘Righteous’ sacrifice God displayed for Noah ‘the Rainbow Sign’ we discover another reason why I equate Noah’s perfect body — covered in a cloud of light — with the perfect light body of Tibetan Buddhism.

    The way out of this Hell, in Cathar belief, was to follow the Angel, or emanation of light, God sent to lead the pure back to heaven. This was Jesus. Pure and spiritual. Mystical and mysterious. He came in a flash to spiritually alter the human body to make it into a form that could, flash, shift from the earthly state of being/temple to the perfect ascended one…the Rainbow Light Body.

    By converting his flesh into a perfect light body (through the power of faith/consciousness) in his resurrection and ascensionJesus defeated Satan (Hebrews 2:14).

    The bigger victory comes at the Second Coming when, in an Ascension/Flash, as I described it in my 2011 book, The Secret of Sion, mass numbers of believers follow Jesus in his transfiguration and trade their earthly flesh and its clothes for a heavenly light body of celestial flesh and a robe of light.

    “The way to escape the (coming/evolving) AI hell is to follow Jesus’s lead as taught in Matthew 19:17:

    Just then, a man came up to Jesus and inquired, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to obtain eternal life?” 17“Why do you ask Meabout what is good? Jesus replied, “There isonly One who is good. If you want to enter life,keep the commandments.” 18“Which ones?” the man asked. In Luke 10:27 Jesus answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'”

    The answer then is the same as it ever was.
    Last edited by Delight; 15th January 2025 at 01:31.

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    Default Re: The Cathars: Gnostic Catholic Opposition in the Middle Ages

    I am curious why it would specifically be the Cathars that are of interest.


    Is it by rejecting Catholic/Orthodox doctrine? Suffering the consequences wholesale?


    What I notice is I have never discovered Cathars as an extension of Neo-Platonism; I am unable to peg them in as a "piece of the pie", so to speak. Everything in Neo-Platonism does concern doctrinal debates on both sides of the "fence of the church". A statement like this:


    Quote Posted by Delight (here)
    The philosophy of the “pure”, or “Good People”, as the Cathars were called, was derived from the first Christians. These were the actual family and followers of Jesus.

    is really hard to support. If it were supportable, the debate would have been over in a few days, if not immediately.

    If we go to a main idea:


    Quote According to Cathar belief, Yahweh/Satan is actually Hell’s angel and his mission is to control humanity by keeping us eternally locked in flesh. The goal is immortality on earth.

    You could not reject the church any harder. If one did not agree to the "goal", you were a gnostic/heretic, but this is an even sharper statement, to say God and the Church is Satan. It was already said, by Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians who all used that name for each other. Again, here, this is more specific, it is to say the Nicene Creed is a pact with the devil.

    I don't agree with it, but I defend anyone's right if they choose to do so.

    Yhwh is another matter entirely. His problem is that he is Monolatrous, that is, his existence is to destroy everything else. Almost exactly like Akhenaten. The difference is that Akhenaten's program was repealed rather quickly.

    If I take the non-church, gnostic view that Paul and Jesus never knew each other, I would conclude that they independently tried to stop the progress of Yhwh. I will credit them for that. I don't believe the Persians had any idea what Judaism was about. People in that region did. In my evaluation, this is the more relevant and pressing issue, than theologies of Jesus the Logos. I don't react enough to the "resurrection" thing to even get into a discussion about it, aside from the fact it has been applied with force.


    I have nothing to do with any of this, so it doesn't affect me. Here is where my realm is being cribbed:


    Quote As I have written and presented extensively since 2006, I look at it through the lens of Tibetan Buddhism where the term “perfect body” refers to our ascended Rainbow Light Body.


    Buddhism is not Tibetan. The closest potential meaning of that phrase is Prasangika philosophy, which was sculpted in the 1200s and reflects nothing Indian. That might seem like a technicality, but, it is true that indoctrination camps were run for this very purpose, implying there might be a kind of "Buddhist Gnosticism" that is being crowded out. That would be approximately correct. So I could pose a similar argument about "Buddhism" vs. "Tibetan Buddhism" with the reminder that Tibetan has about ten per cent of the vocabulary of Sanskrit, and, before the 700s, Tibetans thought people were just monkeys without soul or anything like that.

    It's not a "lens" you can look through pedantically. What is being referred to is really Complete Enjoyment Body. Because I have personally experienced this, I am in a position to speak from that view. That is what I am doing.

    When I do that, I find that Catharism mainly derives from a 900s Bogomil text, the Book of the Secret Supper, which is about Satan as John the Baptist.

    The difficulty is, if I present the Twenty Parallels of the Gospels to Buddhism, nothing much will be left besides its unique eschatology. I will be left without finding "teachings" if nothing new is said.

    Polemically, there is nothing "our" about Rainbow Body. Ordinary people don't have it, obviously, and it is a theological discard of anything outside of itself.

    Now, of course, I don't believe in Genesis whatsoever, but I do accept it as a certain fitting of myth. So far -- just in my reaction -- if the myth has usefulness in a symbolic manner, Noah was probably not human. Nevertheless, the argument presented here is a positive value on "perfection":


    Quote perfect in his generations” (Genesis 6:9). The Hebrew word for “perfect” in that verse is tamiym...

    For the elaboration, we are directed to a Sethian gnostic text condemned by Iraneus, discovered at Nag Hammadi, based in the Spirit Barbelo:


    Quote The Apocryphon of John was among the texts, in three Coptic versions translated from the Greek. Two of the versions are very similar and represent one manuscript tradition; they incorporate a lengthy excerpt from a certain Book of Zoroaster appended to the Apocryphon (as chapters 15:29 – 19:8f).

    I'm not that familiar with it, because it is the mainstream introductory gnostic text.

    The review shows a standard emanational doctrine, in which nothing about a race is mentioned; perfection is attributed to the Monad.

    Whatever would be taught here is Greek, moreover, it is still an effort to replace Judaism, and so how "perfection" relates between the two texts might bear some examination.

    As pseudodepigriphia, there is nothing less than a Zoroaster Prophesies Jesus, and, what is referred to above is highlighted in Green in the publication, and, it's not remotely Persian.

    Moreover, Zoroaster having any books at the time would be news. It was a transmission.


    Its Pahlavi literature is drastically different, and the Sassanian Empire is rather like the Catholics in stamping out non-members.



    The complication in most of these works is that of Duality.

    This is a particularly westernized idea that has no place in my sphere.

    We are able to find a blistering metamorphosis in Zoroastrianism.

    Yes, it originally has Disturbed Mind or Angra Mainyu, understood as the antithesis of the Good Law.

    It is the later Persian Ahriman that is doctrinalized along with an End Times Resurrection. This leads to "extreme dualism" as expressed by Mani and *some* strands of gnosticism, and a type of Father of Cosmic Evil who is out there and really powerful. Because this creed cannot be specifically dated, it cannot be conclusively shown as the source of Christian belief, but they are eerily close to the same.

    Even though the Zoroastrians accept ideas that may be fairly Christian-or-Gnostic, it does not include Yhwh or Monolatry.

    I, at least, only accept a form of "moderate dualism", particularly in the interest of blaming everything evil on man, rather than an alternate force.



    The name Satan is of Jewish origin; its opposite would be "Paraclete", which is Greek, however in usage it is mainly a Jewish legal term. The context is an argument, those two are the prosecutor and defense attorneys.

    I take the intended subject very seriously, but it works a little differently. Rather than focusing on the devil, we would call it Shutting the Door to Hell. It doesn't matter to me how anyone else understands it -- just if that is what they manage to accomplish (or attempt).

    In concordance with that, I would agree that "Plasma Individual" is the closest material-speak for "reality", but again it is more like they are admitting what we know from experience. Until a better thesis comes along, I would correspond it to Agni Vaisvanara. That's my own personal opinion or suggestion, which is not coming from any other sources. It's less of a deductive process and more of an "apocalypse" or "revelation" of something that was personally experienced, and propagated through devotees. Call it the Object of Gnosis perhaps.

    So, generically, or non-denominationally, I would support Plasma and Hell as of doctrinal significance. If anyone is able to understand those subjects in a serious manner, then, for the most part, we are at least in philosophical alignment, and share values. That's like a Shibboleth, only better.

    As to the plausible need for Gospel and Gnostic texts, I suppose if you tell someone the Messiah is coming, and then he is dead and you have to say he's coming back, we wait for a few days. A year? If he's not there in two years, I might need another Messiah. And then nothing for several years. Will I see him in my lifetime? And by the end of that, you'd have a wave of folks going out in despair due to the negative. You'd have to cultivate a whole new crowd and persuade them such a thing was for the "future", which is in complete contradiction to its meaning. So the various texts are apologetics.

    I would suggest the Old Testament cripples the Greek language and the New one, the Hebrew Messiah.

    In the Septuagint, ca. 300 B. C. E., Messiah is Christ as in Isaiah:


    “Thus says the Lord to his Christ, to Cyrus…”


    It's a "used" word, generally having the connotation "king".

    They just invented, or designated it, because it already has a Greek meaning, which has nothing to do with titles or offices, and can even be a little snide like "putting on airs". It can be as mundane as deodorant. By extension, it could also be products applied by oracles.

    If someone tried to tell me an equivalent of Cyrus the Great was "certain in the future", it would repel me. I suppose others are attracted to that sort of thing. A subjective one that works in the present through an Emanational doctrine sounds more dynamic and aware. If I don't come up with a weird Christos Messiah, I am left with some of the parting words of Jesus were about the Spirit that will next come to the people. If anyone got this, that's what I'm trawling for.

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    Default Re: The Cathars: Gnostic Catholic Opposition in the Middle Ages

    I'm going to add something here that is marginally germane to the Cathars, and more part of the background.

    I looked to see if there was any other thread on this subject, and, there is not, so it is at least congruent to this one. I found out relatively recently that Apostle John is an important figure in Christianity. The issue, however, is that it appears that half of the followers of John formed the church, and half of them migrated to the gnostic or heretic camp.

    It is a fairly serious debate among these groups; whether there was one "John" or many. The writer of the Epistle *might* be the same as the author of the Gospel; the writer of Revelations is almost certainly *not*. And, there are other works also attributed to this name, not in the canon.

    And so the Cathars were holding something where John interviews Jesus, however, this particular text cannot be traced earlier than the 900s.

    The compiled article also referred to the Apocryphon of John, which it is not said the Cathars used.

    They *did* evidently have one older work, from ca. 75-150, which is known to be complete only in Ethiopia, the Ascension of Isaiah:


    Quote Into the middle of this (3:13–4:22) is a Christian apocalypse called the Testament of Hezekiah, describing a vision of the coming of Jesus, the subsequent corruption of the Christian church, the rule of Beliar, and the second coming. All of this is phrased in such a way that it is clearly a code for the persecution of the Church by Nero and the belief that Nero was an Antichrist.

    The second part of the book (chapters 6–11) is referred to as the Vision of Isaiah and describes an angel-assisted journey, prior to the events of the first part of the book, by Isaiah through the Seven Heavens. It is written from a Christian perspective, concentrating on Jesus (named as the "Beloved" in the text) descending through each of the heavens disguising himself as an angel toward earth, his earthly birth, death, his resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus.

    Moreover, this work displays a certain inter-textuality:


    Quote The demon Beliar appears in quite a number of apocryphal works, including the Book of Jubilees, the Book of Enoch, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and the Sibylline Oracles. Finally, Isaiah's journey through the Seven Heavens parallels that of Enoch in the Second Book of Enoch, and the Epistula Apostolorum.

    Now, compared to most of the rest of them, if I am forced to deal with the devil one way or another, I notice they mostly use a blame game and put "someone else", or a particular deity, as the devil. Here, we encounter Belial, which is neither a person or place, nor a Canaanite myth in someone else's house of worship, and, it wouldn't be, because it has a very appropriate meaning, Worthlessness.

    Alright. If I want to decide what to toss in the discard pile, that is a reasonable criterion.


    The cited article at least gave us the suggestion that "perfection" was a central doctrine among gnostics. The Apocryphon of John must have been in Gaul by around 150, over a century in advance of the New Testament. It was also found at Nag Hammadi, which wasn't completely gnostic, because it includes a few books representing Orthodox doctrine, as well as a few Hermetic fragments. The gnostic books on Jesus were quite widespread before the term "Christianity" existed.


    I'll start immediately. Going from the published edition, the green text is belial. I just ignore it.

    Unfortunately, we are forced to use someone else's translation and commentary. It's not the original. Yet, without explaining it, we are given the Greek term Autogenes:


    Quote In Sethian Gnosticism, Autogenes (Meaning "Self-Born One" in Greek) is an emanation or son of Barbelo (along with Kalyptos and Protophanes according to Zostrianos). Autogenes is mentioned in Nag Hammadi texts such as Zostrianos, The Three Steles of Seth, Allogenes the Stranger, and Marsanes.

    Autogenes in Gnosticism is roughly parallel to the Platonic soul.

    There is more than one version, and, we can get the next meaning from something hosted in Russia:


    Quote In Greek, the word for “spirit,” pneuma, is neuter in
    grammatical gender while the Latin spiritus is masculine.
    Therefore, in Western theology, while Father and Son are
    masculine, the gender of the Holy Spirit is unclear,
    although regularly referred to with the masculine pronoun
    he. However, in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Syriac, the word
    for “spirit” is feminine in grammatical gender.
    Accordingly, in early Syriac Christianity (and probably
    also in the Aramaic Christianity of Jesus) the Holy Spirit
    was conceived to be a feminine being, the Mother. In
    those Eastern Christian churches the trinity could have
    been “Father, Mother, and Son.

    Russian websites are great for providing the "whole thing" on materials such as this. Additionally, the original is not in Greek, and they actually have the Coptic version which I can't read, with a few Greek correspondences, which I can.

    The "perfection" applied here is:

    τέλειος

    teleios


    Flipping to the Concordance, it is in the Gospel of John, one time, in a less than robust manner. Elsewhere, we see it intertwined with:


    Sophia

    Sophia and Christos


    And so if the Bible was going to tell me anything about Perfection of Wisdom, it would come down to about two sentences.

    The gnostic text begins with an accuser or "Satan", a Pharisee called:


    Arimanios


    which is not a Greek or Jewish name, and, in fact, has no known attestation as a human being anywhere. They have almost certainly penned in Persian "Ahriman".

    It refutes Moses multiple times.

    It parallels some sentences from the Gospel of John.


    Note this caveat:


    In this description of the work of the redeemer it is conspicuous that the
    redeemer is nowhere referred to as Christ, nor as Jesus or Saviour or Lord.
    Although they all occur in the AJ of CII, these terms are not used as self-designations by the one speaking. Words which suggest the realm of light are
    used as self-designations. Pronoia and the memory of Pronoia, or the memory
    of fulfillment (Pleroma), the light which is in light, the richness of light, such
    are the self-designations which are used.


    On the other hand, this and similar texts contain almost no biographical information about Jesus. Instead, it is more like a type of role, which, implicitly, is not exclusive; i. e. perhaps Zoroaster may have been able to work with the redeemer. So this is a bit more flexible and fluid. Buddha and Zoroaster are not framed as people that the universe revolves around, just examples of doing this kind of work. The canonical situation of Jesus as a mandatory ingredient of the trinity has always seemed like a limited viewpoint. I think he would have been able to state the Nicene Creed if that was what he meant, which makes it seem like he was talking about something else.


    Although you can skim the brief translation in a matter of minutes, this closer study amounts to over three hundred pages.

    As not being a "follower" of any of it, I can say that yes, this literature at least tells me something of a probably-female Spirit and an activity with worlds of light that I and/or we may experience. It does so in the interest of perfection:


    complete, perfect, mature


    If that cements a Spirit of Wisdom in us, we share the "immovable" trait of the higher world:


    ...the most certain information about the meaning of the word is given us in BG
    and CIII. CIII 33,3 shows us that ATKIM can at least translate the Greek
    é&odAeutos, and BG 88,9 gives us some evidence of the objective connection:
    here it concerns the primeval being, the existing spirit, who decides to create;
    he did this, says the Redeemer, because he did not wish to be alone to enjoy
    his wealth of goodness, but so that other spirits of that generation which cannot
    be shaken, should enjoy it


    From my view, at least, we share a little bit of common ground. I don't think this is utter nonsense, and, there's no way it can be used for nationalism or I would say bigotry. If it has any legitimate descent, it would be among the Druze.

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