Gnosis: Tradition and Revelation

333 Pages·2008·2.416 MB·English

by  Javier Vargas, Rafael. Casan

GNOSIS
Tradition and Revelation

Rafael Vargas
Javier Casañ
GNOSIS TRADITION AND REVELATION
Copyright © 2008 by Rafael Vargas and Javier Casañ.

First published in Spanish in 1999 under the title
GNOSIS TRADICIÓN Y REVELACIÓN.
Copyright © 1999 Rafael Vargas y Javier Casañ.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief
quotations, embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Cover design by Eduardo Basterretche G.

ISBN 0-9758737-1-7

www.gnosistr.com

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
With profound love and respect
to the V. M. Samael Aun Weor

"The Gospel of Truth is joy for those who have received from
the Father of truth the grace of knowing him, through the power of
the Word that came forth from the Pleroma, the one who is in the
thought and the mind of the Father, that is, the one who is
addressed as 'the Savior,' (that) being the name of the work He is to
perform for the redemption of those who were ignorant of the
Father, while in the name of the gospel is the proclamation of hope,
being discovery for those who search for him."

GOSPEL OF TRUTH

"Unquestionably, Gnostic Knowledge always escapes the
normal analysis of subjective rationalism.
The correlate of this knowledge is the infinite innermost part of
the person, the Being.
The reason of Being of the Being is the Being itself. Only the
Being can know itself. The Being, therefore, knows itself in the
Gnosis.
The Being, reassessing and knowing himself is Self-Gnosis;
indubitably the latter in itself is Gnosis.
The Being's self-knowledge is a suprarational movement that
depends on Him, that has nothing to do with intellectualism."

SAMAEL AUN WEOR

"The Monad, by means of different "esoteric revelations" not
only persuades the soul, but rather also exerts, with all its rights,
full control over the soul.
And when the soul, through these revelations, comes to know
what she was, what she has come to be, where she was, where she
was thrown, where she is going, from what she should be liberated,
what it is to be born, what it is to be reborn, then the peak moment
has arrived in which the soul, knowing she is misplaced, will
cooperate with the divine plan of her own Being."

RAFAEL VARGAS
CONTENTS

1- UNIVERSAL GNOSTICISM........................................................9
THE GNOSTIC OPPORTUNITY...........................................................9
TRADITION AND REVELATION.......................................................11
2- CLASSICAL GNOSIS..................................................................19
THE GNOSTIC MYTH.......................................................................19
THE SUPREME DIVINITY..............................................................21
THE CHRIST, A PSYCHOLOGICAL PROTOTYPE OF HUMAN
PERFECTION..................................................................................24
THE PHILOSOPHY OF EMPTINESS IN AGNOSTOS THEOS............26
SCHOOLS AND MASTERS................................................................30
THE GNOSTIC MASTER VALENTINUS.........................................32
BASILIDES.....................................................................................35
CARPOCRATES..............................................................................37
OTHER IMPORTANT GNOSTIC MASTERS....................................39
MARCION...................................................................................39
SATURNINUS OF ANTIOCH........................................................40
JUSTINUS....................................................................................40
SOME GNOSTIC SCHOOLS............................................................41
SETHIANS...................................................................................42
PERATAS....................................................................................44
OPHITES OR NAASSENERS........................................................45
CAINITES....................................................................................47
ISCARIOTS..................................................................................47
3- THE GNOSTIC LIBRARY OF NAG HAMMADI.................51
GNOSTIC TRANSCENDENCE OF THESE GOSPELS..........................55
THE GOSPEL OF TRUTH..................................................................61
THE GOSPEL OF PHILIP...................................................................91
THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS.............................................................149
THE GOSPEL OF MARY.................................................................201
THE SECRET BOOK OF JAMES......................................................221
4- FROM MARTYRDOM TO INQUISITION..........................257
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GNOSTICISM AND ORTHODOXY..........272
WOMEN IN THE CHURCH..............................................................277
MATRIMONY CHURCH-STATE.....................................................283
COUNCIL OF NICAEA, A.D. 325................................................287
THEODOSIUS, EDICT OF THESSALONICA (A.D. 380)...............291
A.D. 385.....................................................................................292
A.D. 543.....................................................................................293
COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE (A.D. 553).............................293
5- THE RETURN OF THE HERESY..........................................295
543 A.D......................................................................................298
553 A.D......................................................................................298
752 A.D......................................................................................298
BOGOMILS..................................................................................299
CATHARS....................................................................................301
TEMPLARS..................................................................................308
FREEMASONS AND ROSICRUCIANS...........................................313
CONTEMPORARY GNOSTICISM..................................................320
6- CHRONOLOGY.........................................................................325
7- BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................................................329

UNIVERSAL GNOSTICISM 9

1- UNIVERSAL GNOSTICISM

The Gnostic Opportunity

"Speaking very frankly and in plain language we will say,
"Gnosis is a very natural functionalism of the consciousness; a
Philosophy Perennis et Universalis."

Unquestionably, Gnosis is the illuminated knowledge of the
Divine Mysteries reserved for an elite.

The word "gnosticism" contains inside its grammatical
structure the idea of systems or currents dedicated to the study of
Gnosis...

The gnostic revelation is always immediate, direct, intuitive; it
radically excludes the intellectual operations of a subjective type,
has nothing to do with the experience and assemblage of
fundamentally sensorial information."

Samael Aun Weor

Looking at the calendar created starting from the
Christian era, we are at the end of the second millennium, with
all the prophetic, social and human events that always
accompany the end of a cycle. Therefore, it is a good moment
to make a balance sheet of the history of our race, and to
reflect about the critical moment in which a civilization
agonizes to give way to a new project of the universal
intelligence on the setting of our planet.
10 UNIVERSAL GNOSTICISM

Glancing through that history, we can contemplate in an
astonishing manner the continuous effort carried out by the
divinity through the White Lodge and its Masters of Wisdom,
to grant real opportunities to all the Beings that impel their
sparks through the path of regeneration. We can affirm,
without fear of being mistaken, that always, in every moment,
in a more or less public or secret way, and throughout time, in
all places, humanity has had the gnostic opportunity at its
reach. That is to say, the opportunity to enter into the
mysteries of the science of the Being's Self-realization.

If we look back in a reflective manner, we verify that
these mysteries of universal gnosticism were known in
different times in all the preamerican cultures which vibrated
intensely with the Mayan and Toltec rays. Olmecs, Zapotecs,
Quechuas, Incas, Koguis, Lakotas, and even the Mayan and
Toltec descendants held in their time the keys of the Great
Arcanum which will be unveiled in this book through the
writings of primitive gnosticism. At the same time, and also in
different epochs, initiatic schools existed in Egypt, Tibet,
China, India, and even in the Europe of the Druids (children of
the serpent) and of the Nordic Mysteries. The serpentine
wisdom of the Chaldean people (magicians of the fire), of the
Assyrians (heirs of Osiris-Sirius), of Mesopotamia, Etruria, is
proven and let us not forget the Greek mysteries. Later on, as
we will verify throughout this work, those keys of the
ancestral wisdom were revitalized by the Hebrew initiates, the
primitive Gnostic Christians and, following their example, by
all the schools of regeneration that came later: Islamic Sufism,
Bogomils, Cathars, Templars, Builder Lodges, Medieval
Alchemists, Freemasons and Rosicrucians. And through
them—although not exclusively—and through the incarnation
of the Avatar of the Era of Aquarius, the V. M. Samael Aun
Weor, by means of the Contemporary Gnostic Movement, the