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Jessenic View on Gnosis (Thirteen Points Of JESSENIC VIEW ON GNOSIS (THIRTEEN POINTS OF CLARIFICATION AND DEFENSE OF TRUE JESSENIAN GNOSTIC HERITAGE) TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 – What Jessenes assume to be Gnosticism and Gnosis........................................................... 2 2 – What Jessenes, as Gnostics, assume to be the Cosmos........................................................ 4 3 – What Jessenes, as Gnostics, understand and conceive regarding Deity............................... 8 4 – What Jessenian Gnosticism conceives on being human .................................................... 11 5 – Gnostic-Jessenian conception on Salvation ....................................................................... 15 6 – The concept of proper conduct in Jessenian Gnosis .......................................................... 16 7 – The Jessenian Gnostic concept on fate or heimarmené...................................................... 20 8 – Jessenian Gnosis and its respective definition of psyche and of the Jungian scientific assessment regarding the aspects of human psyche and ego ................................................... 22 9 – The great Gnostic ancient concept of Gehenna or reflecting sphere and the psycopompic work of the great Mystery Schools from all times and ages .................................................... 27 10 – The fear of some modern Gnostics about what the great angelical work of God’s Love before the mystery of the death, revealed in Psalm 23............................................................. 30 11 – The Gospel of Pistis Sophia and the secret of the work of Angelical Fraternity in the domain of reflecting sphere or Gehenna. ................................................................................. 31 12 – Deepening into the Jessenic thought on Cabalah, Gnosis and Gnosticism...................... 32 13 – The building of a Gnostic Ekklesia as an echo of legitimate yearning of Anthropos; such Ekklesia responding to Mani’s mantra: ‘The Ekklesia is one, is two and is three’ ................. 35 Copyright © Jessenian Community. All rights reserved. Jessenic View on Gnosis 1- WHAT JESSENES ASSUME TO BE GNOSTICISM AND GNOSIS. Gnosticism is the Initiatory Way for achieving the Knowledge of God and His relation with Creation and Creatures, and that of these with God, based on direct contact between the mind in enlightenment process and the divine principle concealed within human heart. In Greek, the kind of Knowledge reached by neither studies nor intellectual effort, but rather by a set of cognition, insight and enlightenment experiences through which God makes Himself known and is acknowledged by humans is called Gnosis. Truthfully, Gnosis is the very God’s breath, the Blowing (Paraclete) hypostatically1 transmitting itself in an inner or intuitive manner, and once assimilated by the Gnostic, leads the one to a spiritual experience, unable to be described neither dogmatically, as theology does, nor philosophically. Instead, it pursuits to such expression in the myth, in the Mystery Language. Regarding this, we should not see ‘myth’ likewise the definition from a dictionary, to wit, a ‘Story in which imaginary beings and events take place, symbolizing nature forces, human life aspects etc.’, or a ‘Representation of facts or actual characters, exaggerated by demotic mind, tradition etc.’, or even a ‘Depiction of a historical event so full of fanciful overstatements that it deviates itself almost completely from reality or verges on falsehood’. A definition for myth that most closely approximates to the one Gnosis and Gnosticism resort, in order to manifest and make themselves assimilable by human inward, is following: ‘Myth is a language which employs allegory, and whereby a glimpse on a historical or philosophical natural fact is available, yet on a totally spiritual background, i.e. on a background oriented to bring about the very interpretation of soul’s life experiences’. Not only Gnosticism, but also great esoteric religions from Greece and the East have utilized myths to compose enlightening initiatory teaching which communicates as Mystery Language. Mystery Language overlaps mythical language, although not shunning the later, to create a style of esoteric message mostly rather speaking to cognition, insight and eventually enlightenment than to reason, thought and feelings. Gnosticism is that initiatory teaching based on Gnosis, the hypostatical knowledge arriving through a inner way, by intuitive means, providing the process for a true genesis, or as Jesus would say, a new birth. The person dead to Light, once having engaged in the Fall, is able to reborn to Light through this new birth. 1 We employ the term Hypostasis in its upmost esoteric meaning, i.e. it means to us more than mere genesis, but rather those beings directly generated by God’s Power, yet, along with such Power, which is pure Light, those beings are assuming ever increasing parcels of darkness, thus distancing from God, although not disconnecting from Him, and descending through a decreasing scale of Light down to the neighboring the darkness itself, bearing however that power of Light as Knowledge of God or Gnosis. Before the Fall, those Angelic Beings reached the ‘Moon’, not going any further. Then Adam, the Humankind, was generated or hypostasized, as an angelical throng who went through the lunar veil, coming to inhabit Heavenly Earth, located very close to the darkness. Such Man owned, by hypostasis, Gnosis and lived in it. 2 Jessenian Community Such Gnosis is reclaimed in the Gospel of Pistis Sophia, in the Hymn of the Pearl2, as well as other classical Gnostic works, e.g. the prefiguration of the Saviour, that is, of Knowledge which comes down through an Angelic hypostatical descending latter, putting on itself the angelical garment respective to each stair, until reaching and mingling us, the fallen. In that sense, it is said Jesus has ascended to the Heights, descended while getting dressed with the vesture from each angelical domain, and reached us clothing a triplet and fivefold vestment, where it was written the following five words: zama, zama, ozama rarama ozay3. That process of descending Saviour-Gnosis is the same of everyone Saved, in other words, of everyone longing to be redeemed, meaning that those vestures are going to sprout in the one, as if a soul birth or a new birth. Concerning this new birth, we should turn ourselves to the mythological depiction in Moses’ book named Bereshit (Genesis), in order to observe that underneath the Tree of Life there have been four river arms and that alluded tree has been revolved by a serpentine fire sword. All present description must be understood in the following way: Gnosis, God’s hypostatical Knowledge, has descended, via angelical being after angelical being, to the ‘Moon’, and from ‘Moon’ to the heart of Earth (Adamah), through an angelic being named Adam, finally touching the waters of the planet. In fact, it is written in Genesis 1, verses 2 and 3: ‘And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.’ (King James Bible). This means Gnosis has reached the Heavenly Land waters and inhabited its surface, as we should notice in Psalm 29, verses 3 to 5 : ‘Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness. The voice of the LORD [is] upon the waters: the God of glory thundereth: the LORD [is] upon many waters. The voice of the LORD [is] powerful; the voice of the LORD [is] full of majesty. The voice of the LORD breaketh the cedars; yea, the LORD breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.’ (idem) In Gnostic more advanced teachings, Heavenly waters stand for baptismal waters within which Adam perpetually had been remained, extracting from the cedar of Lebanon4 (that is, from the Tree of Life in Eden) God’s majestical voice (i.e. Gnosis). Such tree immersed in waters points indeed to the whole hypostasized Angelical Hierarchy, from the highest heights, where God stands walled with transcendence, to the 2 Versions for both the Gospel of Pistis Sophia and the Hymn of the Pearl by Jessenian Community are available. The first is to be ordered. The second can be read and downloaded from Jessenian website. 3 The author is aware that the expression, as contained in the Coptic version of the Gospel of Pistis Sophia (although originally written in Greek, copies only in Coptic were found to the present time), is zama zama ozza rachama ozai (ZAMA ZAMA VZZA RAXAMA VZAI,, being transliterated to Greek ZAMA ZAMA WZZA RACAMA WZAI). (Reviewer’s note) 4 The water from the river of Eden, as well as the sap from Lebanon or Tree of Life indicate the luminous blood, pure and replete of Gnostic consciousness, which hypostatically flows from God to the lower spot, represented by the Earth, through the vessels of the Angels and Adam. That is the reason the Hebrew particle dam, meaning blood, appears in the terms Adamah (earth) and Adam. On the Cross, Christ provided Adam those blood sap and water once again, and the blood (dam) for Adam, nourishing him with water and blood from Gnosis once more. www.jessenios.com.br 3 Jessenic View on Gnosis lowest site, Eden, home of Adam-Angel. Furthermore, all that descending rank had borne Gnosis through, in order to make it buoy on the waters, like God’s Spirit who proclaims ‘Let there be Light’. When Adam has lost his heavenly citizenship, being expelled to Gnosis-deprived darkness, he suffered
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