Gnostic or New Age Terms and Concepts Continued

1 Corinthians 2:9-13

9.But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. 10 But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. 11 For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

Quote from the Gospel of Judas: "Jesus said, [Come], that I may teach you about [secrets] no person [has] ever seen. For there exists a great and boundless realm, whose extent no generation has seen, [in which] there is [a] great invisible [Spirit], which no eye of an angel has ever seen, no thought of the heart has ever comprehended, and it was never called by any name".30

From discussion forums on the internet:

BALANCING GODDESS AND GOD. Goddess Worshipers: of Mother Earth, Shekinah, Mary Magdalene, Isis, Freya, Sophia, Asherah who still appreciate some of the 2000 year old traditions of Esoteric, Gnostic, Occult Christianity. You are needed. HELP PUT THE GODDESS, THE SACRED FEMININE BACK INTO JUDEO-CHRISTIANITY AND WESTERN THOUGHT. We post nifty Goddess and God prayers, rituals. Kabbalah, Knights Templar, Rosicrucian, Ancestral Religions, The DaVinci Code, Sacred Marriage, Integral Christianity are all discussed. If you recognize the Earth-based or "Occult" Traditions, are into Christo-Pagan thought or alternative religions but still think there was something to Christianity,... Yeshua was a teacher of the ancient Mystery tradition. He was married to Mary Magdalene, the other half of the Messiah archetype, both of them representing the Divine Energy as it Incarnates in both Masculine and Feminine forms. The wedding at Cana was theirs, legend says they even produced children. The books Holy Blood, Holy Grail and the Da Vinci Code discuss a hidden line of their descendants still among us today. This desposyni ("family or kin of the Lord") spread from the Mediterranean thru all Europe and beyond. You are probably one of them if you feel strangely attracted to this concept or belief system. Genetic or DNA memory could be nagging. Be sure to check out our online Esoteric Mystery School at the link below. And if you feel called to become an Ordained Minister to serve the alternative religious community...." 30a   

"Christian Wicca blends the "Old Religion" with Jesus and the Goddess. Christian Wicca is an eclectic form of Christianity based on the spiritual beliefs of the Holy Bible, the Kabbalah, and the Gnostic Gospels; it is practiced via the personal spiritual methods of Wicca.
This is also a list for those who are truly open to learning...If the idea of learning from sources other than the canon Bible bothers you then you might not be comfortable here. ... If you are uncertain about whether it is right or wrong for you to practice wicca as a follower of Jesus and the Lord and the Lady... or unsure about the Christian Lady even, I suggest you first read the essays on ... (christopagan mystery school and info on the Christian Goddess)..." 30b

The Gnostic Apostle Thomas:
Lady Wisdom Again
"The true life is inward, and calls for renunciation, remorse, and penitence. like Jesus as he is often pictured in The canonical gospels, Cynics taught and ..." 31

The Acts of John:
"And John, when he saw him that was raised, said: Now that thou art raised, thou dost not truly live, neither art partaker or heir of the true life: wilt ..." 32.

The proper noun of Lady Wisdom is found throughout gnostic writings. The Message has Lady Wisdom as The Tree of Life. However, the proper noun use of Lady Wisdom is suggestive of the gnostic application, which includes 'her' as being the consort of God, and other heresies.

Among gnostic and similar writings Lady Wisdom is also known as the Queen of Heaven, the Divine Feminine, Sophia, a goddess and so on.  One article discussing it, noted:

"...Sophia, a key figure in Gnostic mythology, ...The basic Gnostic myth has many variations, all of which refer to Aeons, intermediate deific beings, who exist between the ultimate, the True God, and men. They, together with the True God, comprise the realm of Fullness (Pleroma) wherein the potency of divinity operates. One of the aeonial beings, bearing the name of Sophia (= Wisdom), is of great importance to the Gnostic world view; for ...in the course of her journeying, Sophia came to emanate from her own flawed consciousness a being. This being in turn became the creator of the material and psychic cosmos - also called Demiurgos (= half-maker) - who imagined himself to be the ultimate and absolute God. ...Gnostics consider the world to be flawed...Human nature mirrors the duality in the world, in part being made by the demiurge, the false creator God, often also identified with the God of the Old Testament, and in part consisting of the light of the True God. The Goddess Sophia, also known as Lady Wisdom, is an esoteric archetype, woven together of Hellenic, Judaic, philosophical, and Gnostic strands, whose re-emergence in the 20th century - especially in the writings of C. G. Jung (1875-1961) and Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) - is a sign of the break up of conceptual barriers erected by orthodox religion and social conservatism. The Goddess of Wisdom can in fact be perceived as bridging everyday life and the world of the eternal,..." 33.

The Sophia (Wisdom) of Jesus Christ. "...And his consort is the Great Sophia, who from the first was destined in him for that Light and the tri-male Spirit, which is that of Sophia, his consort. For from this, Self-perfected Mind'. He reflected with Great Sophia, his consort, and revealed his his female name, 'First Begettress Sophia, Mother of the Universe'. Some call her 'Love'. The perfect Savior said: "Son of Man consented with Sophia, his consort, and revealed His female name is designated 'All-Begettress Sophia'. ..." 34  

The sexual connotations found with regard to God or Christ, aside from the blatant and at times vulgar terms found in many passages, is a New Age concept and heresy. For example:

John 15:5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. KJB

I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you're joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic. " [The Message]

Romans 8:22-23 ...The Spirit of God is arousing us within...." [The Message] See also Mark 12:25,30 "all our ecstasies and intimacies then will be with God." "passion"; 1 Cor 6:16-18;Phil 3:8,9 "...so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him.", 2 Peter 1:3

The Message changes particular phrases such as 'whore', a word well known in the American street language, to the less known, and likely unknown to most, 'sacred prostitute'. Instead of male prostitute or sodomite as used in the KJB and some other version, priest-pimp is used, as though male prostitutes are unknown of in the United States, or anywhere else. [Deut 23:17,18]

Sacred prostitute, whore, sacred whore are all contemporary phrases in the occult and new age.

"....Jungian psychologist Nancy Qualls-Corbett describes the Holy Whore as "a woman, who, through ritual or psychological development, has come to know the spiritual side of her sexuality, her true Eroticism, and lives this out according to her individual circumstances." By this definition, a Sacred Prostitute uses sex as a means to God/dess and to enlightenment. Fundamentalist Christians believe that the door to the kingdom of heaven is opened to those re-born of fire and water. Occult traditions such as Tantra, and magickal orders which esteem the Holy Whore, persuade us to experience our divinity by immersing ourselves in the fires of sexual passion and the baptismal waters of sexual ritual. Sexuality becomes sacred when the Goddess residing in every women is honored.

The term "sacred whore" is not oxymoronic. If we explore the etymology of the words "whore" or "harlot," we find that the split between "priestess" and "prostitute" is a relatively recent one. In her book When God Was A Woman, Merlin Stone informs us that the Hebrew word zonah means both prostitute and prophetess. Barbara Walker, in her Dictionary of Woman's Myths and Secrets, points out that the Hebrew word hor means a cave, pit, or dark hole. The Spanish word for whore, puta, derives from the Latin term for a well, but the Latin term for grave, literally "a hole in the earth," is puticuli, meaning womb of rebirth. These terms for whore were not derogatory...." 34b

The Message also manages to change a clear description of a sin into something entirely different. For example:

Amos 2:7 They grind the penniless into the dirt, shove the luckless into the ditch. Everyone and his brother sleeps with the 'sacred whore'-- a sacrilege against my Holy Name.

Amos 2:7 That pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, and turn aside the way of the meek: and a man and his father will go in unto the same maid, to profane my holy name:  (KJV) {maid: or, young woman}

The New Age/Occult/Theosophy beliefs include concepts of inside out that suggest in order to tread the spiritual or occult path one must turn themselves inside out, meaning a complete 'revolution' in the person. It involves the emptying of the mind of all that one knows and believes and replacing it with a 'pure expanse of consciousness.'

From the gnostic writing:

The Gospel of Thomas: "3 When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty." 35.

Concerning God selves, God created selves and so on, from New Age Study of Humanity's Purpose, and the article "I AM THE OPEN DOOR FOR DIVINE GOVERNMENT"  021 by Patricia Diane Cota-Robles" found in the Awakening-Healing News" Letter of Light:

"...Divine Government is the fulfillment of the Universal Law: As Above, So Below. It is a governing body of the God Selves of all Humanity: a government OF our Divine Selves, BY our Divine Selves, FOR our Divine Selves. When we truly understand what this means, we will get a glimpse of the colossal affect these activations for Divine Government will have on the Earth and all life evolving here.

 Our God Selves are who we really are, they are our super-conscious minds—one with the Divine Heart and Mind of God. They clearly understand the principles governing this Earthly school of learning. They know the need of the hour, and they are able to tap into the Causal Body of God for the viable solutions and answers to all of the problems occurring in our lives and on the planet.

Divine Government means our God Selves will be governing our individual and collective lives as we cocreate Heaven on Earth... Our God Selves know and understand that no nation can prosper or live in security unless every nation is prosperous and secure..." 35b [some bolding in original]

Concerning God-selves, from Hermes Reality Creator Series Books by  Hermes Trismegistus at Wisdomsdoor.com, an article called, God, the Fall, Human Relationships:

In the beginning there was God (Source) and you; ... There also were others like yourself that shared that same unbreakable energy connection to God. .... God had replicated himself and spread himself across vast distances, and each of these selves was exploring the Universe in its own unique way.

Back in that pre-time time the you/God energy connection was of a design that was exclusive.... Realize that at this time all of you were all God-Selves – individualization did not occur till after the “Fall.”...

 In comes what is termed as the “Human Fall.” At this point in the cosmic time clock, a group of these individualized God-Selves decided to explore the most dense region of the Universe (physical reality) and in the process they also created the disconnection from God, which you are now aware of and trying to reverse. ...
 
...that connection you had to each other when you were God-Selves. This connection to each other was facilitated by your link with God. In the “Fall,” when that link from you to God was fading, you not only felt cut off from God but from each other....you desperately sought a way to reconnect with your other selves. ...
 
...you are once again God-selves and have once more built up that inner connection between you and God. .... the difference in this full-circle version of yourself is how you perceive your other selves in relation to God. The pre-fall connection had you reaching upward through God and then downward into another God-Self. .... you have learned to experience God in each other – through each other. The energy goes from you, to another, and then up to God. .... a new sense of love for each other is added. This kind of love is represented in the Christ connection.
 
The Christ connection is energy linking your heart chakra to all other people’s heart chakra, built by the desire to reunite with God and to experience the Universe ...." 35c

In 2001 Sun Myung Moon posted a speech titled, Let Us Find Our True Selves. He believes he is the Messiah and Christ will worship at his feet amongst other things.

"...You must understand clearly where you are and how to find yourselves...find your true selves....You must clear up the problem of your love, life and lineage in relationship with God, restore and find your true selves....How we find our true selves and restore them is the really important question. The simple fact of the matter is that our mind and body is in conflict. Throughout history, no one other than Reverend Moon of the Unification movement has had the revolutionary teaching that we must unify mind and body....The final work of indemnity for restoration is to find your true selves. You must make yourself perfect. ...

You must defeat yourselves, deny yourselves. You must deny yourselves and center on God. Without going through this total self-denial, you can never find your true souls. You should understand that you are riffraff. ... the world does not revolve around you. It does not exist for you. From the beginning it has existed for God. It belongs to Him and without returning the world, which includes all of yourselves, there is no way you can find your true selves...How to restore your true selves is the most important thing. How to make the true love, life and lineage of God yours is your most fundamental question...Only by total self-denial can you overcome difficulties..." 36a

Self-sacrifice or self-denial does not and cannot save us. We are saved by God's grace alone. Ephesians 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. The concept that our 'true selves', having 'self-esteem' or other similar concepts being something acceptable to God is false. We are all sinners, and fall short of the glory of God, no matter how 'nice' we might think we are. Romans 3:23, 5:12, 11:32, Gal 3:22

"70 Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] kill you." 36b.

In Matthew 10:28 Eugene Peterson wrote, "There's nothing they can do to your soul, your core being." Core being is found throughout occult and eastern religious beliefs.

From the Complete Self Attunement, and Transformation Intensive, we see the use of core being:

"... I was invited to facilitate a group of Dance leaders from a Sufi based tradition, Dances of Universal Peace, in the Transformation Intensive.  ...Because of the positive response and results from the participants in the New Transformation Intensive,  the Oneness Project, which gives grants in support of Dances of Universal Peace and the realization of unity,...

The stunning message of the mystics is that in the very core of your being, you are God. Strictly speaking, God is neither within nor without—Spirit transcends all duality. But one discovers this by consistently looking within, until “within” becomes “beyond...." 37   

One example is found within numerology in an article titled The Soul's Desire also called Soul Purpose:

"...This vibration is an energy expression that reflects your feelings - not to be confused with your emotions. ...You, as the Soul whom you are, speak through your heart, which is to say, from the core of your being.

This core being in you has been called the Silver Thread, which connects you to your Soul. In actuality, this 'thread' is best understood as an energy field. You are truly a spirit being rather than a mortal being. And as spirit being, you are interconnected with all that is of the spirit realm. You, as Soul, dwell in the eternal realm of spirit...." 38

"... Silencing our minds through prayer and meditation allows us to connect with our core being so we may experience the peace and fulfillment within."

Prayer is most useful for communicating with our Source, for expressing ourselves. A Course in Miracles teaches, "Prayer is the medium of miracles. It is a means of communication of the created with the Creator. Through prayer love is received, and through miracles love is expressed." 39.

"...ancient medicine in Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, etc., tell of the temples being used as hospitals, with priest-physicians...giving every care to the sick ...these devotees of the gods of healing used special incense, prayers, the "temple sleep," invocations, music, astrology, etc., ...in making a pure, serene, uplifting atmosphere around the sick person, would invoke the influences of wholeness within and without him. By putting the inner man in tune with his body, his disordered nature-forces manifesting as disease would tend to flow freely in the currents of health. ..." 40

"...4.   The Gnostics were a closed society.
               a.   They carried engraved stones or other proofs of initiation
               b.   Used passwords and secret handshakes to identify themselves.
     5.   Same basic concepts:
               a.   question God's Word
                         i.   reinterpret it based on gnostic doctrine.
                         ii.  have to add to God's Word to get the "truth."
               b.   take responsibility for yourself; responsible for your own liberation from evil world. ...."  41  

"....In all ages and among all nations there seems to have been a constant endeavor to devise a suitable token which would identify the possessor as the votary of some particular religion, and reveal him openly or secretly to his fellow believers. Among such tokens may be mentioned the Gnostic gems. The Abraxas or Abrasax stones of the first and second centuries are an evidence of this practice. These stones were of various forms, but all had the word Abraxas engraved on them in connection with certain mystical symbols.

The Abraxas stones were first used in Egypt, and from there spread to Syria, and in the fifth century were carried to Spain. These emblems were first given to neophytes as a convenient symbol by which they could be recognized at once and admitted to the secret gatherings where their instruction was completed; they were counted as all powerful for a great many purposes, when the possessors had attained to a full understanding of the things signified. These tokens were not always made of stone, sometimes they were of metal much like the Roman tesserae.

Roman tesserae were used to identify those who had been initiated into the Eleusian and other sacred mysteries..." 42.    

In The Message, Luck is used in 31 verses, Lucky -22, Bad Luck -11, Luckless -7, Unlucky -6, Good luck-2, Spell-twice with occult meaning, Hex-once; Hocus Pocus twice. "Blessed" is changed to fortunate, used 15 times, which means (having unexpected good fortune)  or fortune, used in 12 verses, which defined in today's dictionaries means luck or "an unknown and unpredictable phenomenon that causes an event to result one way rather than another" 43.   

"9. How do you make sure The Message is accurately translated?
A team of exegetical consultants, distinguished professors from various seminaries and colleges, review the text to ensure that it accurately communicates the original Hebrew and Greek. ..." 45

The Message Eugene Peterson's Opinion of The Bible ;   The Message and Dr. Eugene Peterson

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