gnostics and lutherans

[phygelus]

Quite often latter-day gnostics will choose to emphasize, first and foremost and sometimes to the exclusion of any other teaching, that gnosticism does not require an intermediary between the individual and God.  This is just a warming-over of the Protestant doctrine of the "priesthood of all believers", which the Catholic Encycopedia charmingly

Comments

[salimondo]

It's a funny question. I often find myself having to distinguish between "gnosticism" as a technology (the definition you follow here) and "gnosticism" as the specific vehicle that emerged out of the Judeo-Pagan mystery soup with a specific vocabulary of words like "hyle."

To the extent that we are talking about the historical phenomenon, I don't think it's "protestant" at all, but just another co-conspirator in time and creation. I suspect that this is why so much of latter-day "gnosticism" is so concerned with lines of apostolic succession that really just replicates the Catholic hierarchy only with all-new level titles and some nods to inversion.

In so far as that current transmits "gnostic" information -- that is, a conversation that transcends time and creation -- then I usually consider it radically "protestant" in the same way that the Hussites, Adamites and Brethren of the Free Spirit were protestant: the kingdom of god is within you and it is here, rise up!

Self-professed Lutherans and what follows are equally bound to a specific historically received framework and thus you can be a "radical reformation" type like a Hutterite or a "crypto-reformation" type like the Palatinate rosicrucians and Dee's crowd, but not necessarily gnostic in orientation -- although I'm not sure anyone actually asks the Amish. I think this rapidly became confused as the crypto-lutheran rosicrucians ended up as a repository for hermetic thought, carrying fragments of the content of historical "gnosticism" (hyle and aions and so on) forward in the context of a more or less "gnostic" technology (what we now call ye occulte).

Further complicating the matter is the fact that the crypto-lutherans weren't the only carrier for the hyle-gnostic current: strains of the neoplatonist universe were more or less active among the Lullians, Brunians and eventually the Martinists, and all of these were in constant secret interaction with their other half on the other side of Rome, not mention Jews, sufis and God knows what else.

On a practical basis I have to admit finding most self-professed gnostics to be mainline secular types in funny hats. Maybe they're getting something out of it.

[salimondo]

+ William Blake