Finding Gnosticism.

When I was in my early forties I found my interest in matters spiritual coming to the fore. It had started as a child when I was a committed Christian, but had begun to slumber (though not die entirely) when I entered my teen years and found my questions – of which there were many – not being satisfactorily answered by my church’s vicar. (I expect it was why he offered no regret or resistance when I decided to back out of being confirmed. The confirmation procedure required preparation classes, and I was probably proving to be a right pain in the rectum.)  But to continue:

My later upsurge in interest took me well away from exoteric Christianity and towards the richer, more complex Vedic tradition, and on the way I came across Gnosticism through reading a book called The Lake and the Castle by Arthur Guirdham. At that point I thought that Gnosticism was a religion in its own right and was a sort of transition from the Judaic approach towards the Vedic one, the result being that it lay somewhere between the two.

Last night I watched a documentary about The Marsanes, one of the ancient texts found with others at Nag Hamadi in Egypt, and discovered that Gnosticism is certainly not a religion. On the contrary it is effectively anti-religion, seeing all such organisations as self-serving power structures designed to establish control and order over the masses, thus keeping the human race trapped in the low material world where the power of the Demiurge (the God of the Old Testament) holds sway. Gnosticism, on the other hand – and the Marsanes in particular – seeks to explain the nature and content of the many realms of spiritual reality which rise above the level of the material one with which we’re familiar, and on which we strut and suffer. (And that leads me to wonder whether that was what Mount Olympus was meant represent in ancient Greek mythology, although the documentary didn’t say so.)

So now I’m better informed. Another little lesson under the belt.

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But then this afternoon as I was walking down my lane, having been to the top to clear a particularly efficacious road drain, I saw two women chatting on the school car park. They were evidently late comers from the school run and had three boys with them, aged I would say between six and nine. The kids were running about on the grassy embankment, giggling and pushing each other and simply having fun. And they had a dog with them which was joining in and also having a whale of a time. And it occurred to me, as it always does in such situations, that life in this densest of realms sometimes isn’t so bad after all. It’s an old bleat of mine, I know. (And the two mothers smiled and waved.)