Gnostic Quotes & Sayings

I'm a Thelemite. I believe in Thelema, which is Crowley's so-called religion. There are some practitioners here who do something called the Gnostic Mass. I've been to that a few times, but basically, I'm a loner. I don't really need other people. — Kenneth Anger

Philosophical studies are beset by one peril, a person easily brings himself to think that he thinks; and a smattering of science encourages conceit. He is above his companions. A hieroglyphic is a spell. The gnostic dogma is cuneiform writing to the million. Moreover, the vain man is generally a doubter. It is Newton who sees himself in a child on the sea shore, and his discoveries in the colored shells. — Robert Aris Willmott

We drank the blood of our enemies. That's why you see Gnostics so hunted. The sacrament of the Eucharist is really drinking the blood of the enemy. The Grail, the Sangraal, is the bloody vehicle. Why else guard it so sacredly? Why should the black honor-guard ride half a continent, half a splintering Empire, stone night and winter day, if it's only for the touch of sweet lips on a humble bowl? No, it's mortal sin they're carrying: to swallow the enemy, down into the slick juicery to be taken in by all the cells. Your officially defined 'mortal sin,' that is. A sin against you. A section of your penal code, that's all. — Thomas Pynchon

The gnostic is Muslim in that his whole being is surrendered to God; he has no separate individual existence of his own. He is like the birds and the flowers in his yielding to the Creator; like them, like all the elements of the cosmos, he reflects the Divine to his own degree. He reflects it actively, however, they passively; his participation is a conscious one. — Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Defeatist thoughts handicap persons from elevating their mechanistic life to superior states. The majority of persons consider themselves defeated even before beginning the struggle or the Gnostic esoteric work. — Samael Aun Weor

Conservatism is far from what I'm aiming at in proclaiming the establishment of a Sethian left-hand path tradition in the West as one of the first missions of the SLM. In fact, in establishing such a tradition, true to the spirit of sacred transgression and holy subversion that is essential to both Seth and the left-hand path, we are opening a door that enlightens through endangerment, that awakens through risk and peril: this is a radical (from Latin radix, root, implying how deep a change is required) enterprise that is the very opposite of conservatism."
"From the Eye of the Storm" (Zeena's column as Hemet-Neter Tepi Seth for the SLM), Volume I - Summer Solstice issue (2003): "Building a Sethian Left-Hand Path Tradition in the West. — Zeena Schreck

The Gnostic (Knowing) Christians understood these principles being taught by Jesus that were hidden away in so many ingenious ways. The ruling classes at the time feared the true teachings of Jesus. These teachings had been relayed to the disciples and they performed many miracles with them. — Lee Vickers

One of the towering figures of the age of Enlightenment was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, known to this day in German-speaking lands as the poet of princes and prince of poets. Unlike Voltaire, he openly practiced esoteric disciplines, particularly alchemy. He wrote a famous verse about the Cathars, which translated says: "There were those who knew the Father. What became of them? Oh, they took them and burned them!" Goethe's chief work, of course, is his Faust. As noted in chapter 8, the figure of Faust was inspired by the image of the early Gnostic teacher Simon Magus, one of whose honorific names was Faustus. While in Christopher Marlowe's sixteenth-century play, — Stephan A. Hoeller

Philosophy springs from the love of being; it is man's loving endeavor to perceive the order of being and attune himself to it. Gnosis desires dominion over being; in order to seize control of being the Gnostic constructs his system. The building of systems is a gnostic form of reasoning, not a philosophical one. — Eric Voegelin

The French Revolution has been the highest wave of the Gnostic tide. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Redemption is not simply making creation a bit better, as the optimistic evolutionist would try to suggest. Nor is it rescuing spirits and souls from an evil material world, as the Gnostic would want to say. It is the remaking of creation, having dealt with the evil that is defacing and distorting it. And it is accomplished by the same God, now known in Jesus Christ, through whom it was made in the first place. — N. T. Wright

Suggested that Gnosticism expressed a specific religious experience, which was frequently turned into a myth ... It seems clear that at least some of the major Gnostic systems were inspired by vivid emotions and personal experience. And it is now generally accepted that Gnosticism was not a philosophy, or even a Christian heresy, but a religion with its own specific views about God, the world, and man. ("Gnosticism," in Cavendish, Man, Myth, and Magic 1115) And, we might add, Gnosticism is a religion replete with sacraments that liberate the soul. — Stephan A. Hoeller

We live in a Jesus haunted culture that is Biblically illiterate, and so unfortunately at this point in time, almost anything can pass for knowledge of the historical Jesus from notions that he was a a Cynic sage to ideas that he was a Gnostic guru to fantasies that he didn't exist, to Dan Browne's Jesus of hysterical (rather than historical) fiction. — Ben Witherington III

Note, though, something else of great significance about the whole Christian theology of resurrection, ascension, second coming, and hope. This theology was born out of confrontation with the political authorities, out of the conviction that Jesus was already the true Lord of the world who would one day be manifested as such. The rapture theology avoids this confrontation because it suggests that Christians will miraculously be removed from this wicked world. Perhaps that is why such theology is often Gnostic in its tendency towards a private dualistic spirituality and towards a political laissez-faire quietism. And perhaps that is partly why such theology with its dreams of Armageddon, has quietly supported the political status quo in a way that Paul would never have done. — N. T. Wright

About the gnostic writers themselves and the setting in which they lived we know little, although gnostic Christians were influential enough to be denounced at length. — Elaine Pagels

The real gnostic does not attribute any "state" to himself, for he is without ambition and without ostentation; he has a tendency rather
through an "instinct for holding back"
to disguise his nature inasmuch as he has, in any case, awareness of "cosmic play" (lila) and it is hard for him to take secular and worldly persons seriously, that is to say, "horizontal" beings who are full of self-confidence and who remain, "humanists" that they are, below the vocation of man — Frithjof Schuon

Spontaneously, without any theological training, I, a child, grasped the incompatibility of God and shit and thus came to question the basic thesis of Christian anthropology, namely that man was created in God's image. Either/or: either man was created in God's image - and has intestines! - or God lacks intestines and man is not like him.
The ancient Gnostics felt as I did at the age of five. In the second century, the Great Gnostic master Valentinus resolved the damnable dilemma by claiming that Jesus "ate and drank, but did not defecate."
Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil. Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man's crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the creator of man. — Milan Kundera

Gnostic politics is self-defeating in so far as its disregard for the structure of reality leads to continuous warfare. — Eric Voegelin

I would call myself a Gnostic. Which means, I'm interested in pursuing and understanding the spiritual nature of things. A Gnostic is somebody seeking knowledge of that aspect of reality. — Robert Crumb

Nestorian Christians argued that Jesus had two completely distinct natures - one human, the other divine - while Gnostic Christians, especially those called Docetists, claimed that Jesus only appeared to be human but was in fact fully God. — Reza Aslan

I forgot that I was the son of kings, and served their king — Various

His [the pedestrian's] elevation transfigures him into a voyeur. It puts his at a distance. It transforms the bewitching world by which one was 'possessed' into a text that lies before one's eyes. It allows one to read it, to be a solar Eye, looking down like a god. The exaltation of a scopic and gnostic drive: the fiction of knowledge is related to this lust to be a viewpoint and nothing more. — Michel De Certeau

I do not know any moral to be deduced from this view of the subject [of personal character], but one, namely, that we should mind our own business, cultivate our good qualities, if we have any, and irritate ourselves less about the absurdities of other people, which neither we nor they can help. I grant there is something in which I have said which I might be made to glance towards the doctrine of original sin, grace, election, reprobation, or the Gnostic Principle that acts did not determine the virtue or vice of the character; and in those doctrines, so far as they are deducible from what I have said, I agree
but always with a salvo. — William Hazlitt

Man was not put on this planet to toil in the mud. Or the god who put us on this planet to toil in the mud is no god I want to have any part of. It's some kind of gnostic demon. It's some kind of cannibalistic demiurge that should be thoroughly renounced and rejected. — Terence McKenna

The Bible never mentions Christianity. It does not preach Christianity, nor does it encourage us to preach Christianity. Paul did not preach Christianity, nor did any of the other apostles. During centuries when the Church was strong and vibrant, she did not preach Christianity either. Christianity, like Judaism and "Yahwism", is an invention of biblical scholars, theologians, and politicians, and one of its chief effects is to keep Christians and the Church in their proper marginal place. The Bible speaks of Christians and of the Church, but Christianity is gnostic, and the Church firmly rejected gnosticism from her earliest days. — Peter J. Leithart

I have ... had a disturbing dream in which I break through a cave wall near Nag Hammadi and discover urns full of ancient Coptic scrolls. As I unfurl the first scroll, a subscription card to some Gnostic exercise magazine flutters out. — Colin McEnroe

If you see a thing that looks like a cross between a flying lobster and the figure of Abraxas on a Gnostic gem, do not pay it the least attention, never mind where it is; just keep quiet and hope it will go away - for that's your best chance; you have none in a stand-up fight with a good thorough-going African insect. — Mary Kingsley

As Jung says more clearly of Christ: This Gnostic Christ ... symbolizes man's original unity and exalts it as the saving goal of his development. By composing — C. G. Jung

The optimist, the evolutionist, the myth-of-progress school all say that these are just the growing pains of something bigger and better. The Platonist, the Hindu, and, following Plato, the Gnostic, the Manichaean, and countless others within variants of the Christian and Jewish traditions all say that these are the signs that we are made for something quite different, a world not made of space, time, and matter, a world of pure spiritual existence where we shall happily have got rid of the shackles of mortality once and for all. And the way you get rid of mortality within this worldview is to get rid of the thing that can decay and die, namely our material selves. The — N. T. Wright

There are some kinds of Christianity that insist you have to believe literally in doctrine. The Gnostic gospels open out the complexity and multiplicity of approaches to this. If you think the story of the virgin birth is mistranslated, for instance, it doesn't mean you have to throw out the whole thing. — Elaine Pagels

Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it. — Carl Jung

And becoming aware of one's true inner nature, instinctive gut feelings, is not generally thought by those who experience it to be in conflict with the essence of one's spiritual knowledge, but more of a Gnostic direct experience of the Sacred experienced in the gut or all of nature that is greater than us and is connected to us through the gut instincts. — Martha Char Love

64. I am the blue-lidded daughter of Sunset; I am the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night-sky. — Aleister Crowley

The depiction of the divine family is one of the key expressions of the greatest word of power, the Unpronounceable Name of God, or Tetragrammaton. This fourfold name is comprised of the Hebrew letters Yod, Heh, Vav, Heh corresponding respectively to the Father, Mother, Son, and Daughter. The correct pronunciation of Tetragrammaton, which was said to be immensely powerful and capable of destroying the universe, has been lost for centuries. Significantly, if the Yod, symbolising God the Father, is removed from this name, we are left with Heh Vav Heh, which spells Eve, the first woman of the Book of Genesis and some of the Gnostic texts. — Sorita D'este

12. Historians today rely on classics like Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, Caesar's Gallic War, and Tacitus's Histories. The earliest copies we have for these date from 1,300, 900, and 700 years after the original writing, respectively, and there are eight extant copies of the first, ten of the second, and two of the third. In contrast, the earliest copy of Mark's gospel is dated at AD 130 (a century after the original writing), and there are 5,000 ancient Greek copies, along with nearly 20,000 Latin and other ancient manuscripts. The sheer volume of ancient manuscripts provides sufficient comparison between copies to provide an accurate reproduction of the original text. Ironically, a number of fashionable scholars attracted to the so-called gnostic gospels as an "alternative Christianity" have far fewer manuscripts, and the original writings cannot be dated any earlier than a century after the canonical Gospels. — Michael S. Horton

If union means anything, it means that the Christian life is to be a life that is lived with the conscious nearness of the Lord in our lives through the Spirit. God is not remote, like some distant Gnostic or deistic deity, and neither is he immanent in the world around us, for that would depersonalize him. He is transcendent, which means that he stands above us but not far above us. The Hebrew Bible and the New Testament both affirm that God is above, as Lord, but that he is accessible. He is above, for us! And he wishes us to come to him, above us, and to fellowship with him. — Terry L. Wilder

The question concerning Jesus: do you want to know the real story, or just the allegory? — Eli Of Kittim

Where Voegelin seeks to show the Gnostic nature of modernity, Jonas seeks to show the modern nature of Gnosticism. Jonas draws parallels between ancient Gnosticism and modern, secular existentialism to prove that Gnosticism is existentialist, not that existentialism is Gnostic. For Jonas, both philosophies stress above all the radical alienation of human beings from the world. — C. G. Jung

The 'medium' is unaware of its attractiveness, that's all. Everyone loves comics. I've proven this to my own satisfaction by handing them out to acountants, insurance brokers, hairdressers, mothers of children, black belts, pop stars, taxi drivers, painters, lesbians, doctors etc. etc. The X-Files, Buffy, the Matrix, X-Men - mainstream culture is not what it once was when science fiction and comics fans huddled in cellars like Gnostic Christians dodging the Romans. We should come up into the light soon before we suffocate. — Grant Morrison

Supposedly, going to war initiates you into this gnostic priesthood of people who've had a liminal experience forever separating them from civilians. Except ... you go there, and it is what it is. A form of human activity as varied as any other. — Phil Klay

Patience is the Gnostic's scale and the humble the garden's door. — Samael Aun Weor

I guess, in a very real sense, I'm a Gnostic. I had been looking all my life for some great mystery ... I think somewhere deep in my mind is the notion that if I could learn just the right thing, I would be saved. — Whitfield Diffie

It is a surprise to me to like myself; among all the elaborate possibilities I contemplated for my future, that never figured. My hard-won contentment reflects the simple truth that inner peace often hinges on outer peace. In the gnostic gospel of St. Thomas, Jesus says, If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you. — Andrew Solomon

One of these was Harry Hay, a young actor and communist who had been performing in Clifford Odets' play on unionization, Waiting for Lefty, at the Hollywood Guild Theatre. Hay would later become father of the gay rights movement in America, but he was hired to play the organ for the OTO's Gnostic Mass, having been drawn to the temple through his friendship with Regina Kahl. — George Pendle

If the Gospel of Judas found in Codex Tchacos can be convincingly identified as being a Coptic translation of the original Greek Gospel of Judas that Bishop Ireneaus mentioned around A.D. 180 in his book, "Against Heresies," it will be an important step in the study of ancient gnosticism. We would have for the first time the chance to trace back the history of Sethian gnosticism to before the time of Irenaeus. This would be a significant gain in our knowledge of early Christianity. — Gregor Wurst

The Gnostic only can wake up to the true state of Illumination by understanding and disintegrating dreams. — Samael Aun Weor

Gnostic teachings speak of the reality and power of evil and its fundamental presence throughout manifest existence. They declare that while we may not be able to rid the world or ourselves of evil, we may, and indeed will, rise above it through gnosis. — Stephan A. Hoeller

John Michell's The Dimensions of Paradise is inarguably among the most important Gnostic transmissions of recent generations. With his candid, uncomplicated style, John has made widely available the visions, the laws, and the numbers held within pure geometry and which integrate earth and sky, movement and form, cosmos and mankind. — Robert Lawlor

If we can believe in the Gnostic gospel of Thomas, old Uncle Jesus said, If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don't bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth can destroy you. — Anne Lamott

According to Gnostic teaching, the world is a mixture of the seeds of light and of darkness. Though it is impossible to distinguish between them now, in the fullness of time they will separate naturally, as ordained. — Stephan A. Hoeller

Some people, including some who wanted to think of themselves as followers of Jesus, took exactly that line. We can watch the process taking place in the so-called Gnostic gospels (books like the Gospel of Thomas). — N. T. Wright

Have you by any chance an edition of St. Ignatius's treatise against the Gnostics?" he asked in a low clear voice.
The young assistant looked gravely back. "Not for sale, I'm afraid," he said. "Nor, if it comes to that, the Gnostic treatises against St. Ignatius."
"Quite," Anthony answered. — Charles Williams

Most of my married friends now have children, the rewards of which appear to be exclusively intangible and, like the mysteries of some gnostic sect, incommunicable to outsiders. In fact it seems from the outside as if these people have joined a dubious cult: they claim to be much happier and more fulfilled than ever before, even though they live in conditions of appalling filth and degradation, deprived of the most basic freedoms and dignity, and owe unquestioning obedience to a capricious and demented master. — Tim Kreider

The Gnostic Anthropology addresses the magnificence of the Being, your inner being. — Samael Aun Weor

I believe in one Gnostic and Catholic Church of Light, Life, Love and Liberty, the Word of whose Law is THELEMA . — Aleister Crowley

Those with a low view of the Bible should not attempt listening prayer, for it can lead into dangerous gnostic listening. — Leanne Payne

Gnostic tales tell of the homesickness of the soul, its yearning for its own milieu ... — Thomas Moore

Did you realize that much of the original Bible included chapters of Gnostic wisdom?" Ambrose said. "They were purged from the King James Version, many of them lost and destroyed. Lost wisdom destroyed out of fear and narrow-mindedness. They were misunderstood, reviled, much like your own Mormon texts, as not fitting with the clockwork view of the universe as presented by the lying god's groveling servants. — R.S. Belcher

The idea that we are to be absorbed into the Deity is Gnostic in its origins and is quite antithetical to Christianity."

~R. Alan Woods [2006] — R. Alan Woods

Dearest friend, do you not see All that we perceive Only reflects and shadows forth What our eyes cannot see. Dearest friend, do you not hear In the clamor of everyday life Only the unstrung echoing fall of Jubilant harmonies. Vladimir Soloviev, Russian Gnostic and philosopher, 1892 — J. Lincoln Fenn

Perhaps because alchemy combines the ancient, Gnostic focus on the immaterial and transcendent soul, or spark, with the modern, scientific-like focus on the transformation of worldly matter, it serves to connect the two. Despite his professed closer kinship to alchemy, — C. G. Jung

Love is an involuntary gift that manifests unplanned. — Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi

If we fail to understand the biblical story of Jesus, we will compromise our prophetic interpretations of the end-times. And that's exactly what we've done. — Eli Of Kittim

The Gnostic needs a lot of patience because any act of impatience leads him to failure. — Samael Aun Weor

If ignorance alone, according to Gnostic orthodoxy, keeps humans tied to the material world, knowledge frees them from it. Because humans are ignorant, that knowledge must come from outside them. Because the powers of the material world are ignorant, too, that knowledge must come from beyond them as well: it can come only from the godhead. The dependence of humanity on the godhead matches the dependence of the ego on the unconscious to reveal itself. — C. G. Jung

If you bring forth that which is within you, Then that which is within you Will be your salvation. If you do not bring forth that which is within you, Then that which is within you Will destroy you. - THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS — Peter A. Levine

It was as if the entire day, the entire vacation even, were leading up to a single moment. he felt certain then that stan lee was in some direct communication with the universe - in a way, say, that the watcher, the most mysterious marvel character, was content like some gnostic entity merely to know of machinations of creation - and that through lee's spiritually advanced vision, paul's own destiny was entrapped in the monthly serializations of these kitschy superheroes. he seemed both influenced and influencer in the world of marvel. — Rick Moody

The Gnostic is a born revolutionary because total rejection is the perfect proclamation of his divine autonomy.

The Greek roots of the Gnosticism of late antiquity are not to be found in Platonic dualism, but rather in Stoic monism.

Christianity and Gnosticism shared the question. Feeling "allogenous" was a common characteristic. The state of "alienation" is an historical constant, but becomes more acute in times of social crisis. "Alienation" is the ground in which either a Romantic Christian or a democratic Gnostic answer germinates. — Nicolas Gomez Davila