Good Company

Pagan Blog Project - Week Fiveteen - G #2 – Gnostics

What we know about the ancient Gnostics is that we don’t know much. We know that the people who modern people might call Gnostic never called themselves Gnostic. The word Gnostic might have even been used as a slang. (Kind of like how the people who modern people call Pagan never ever called themselves Pagan.)

Plotinus, who is considered by many modern people to be a premier writer of Gnostic source materials, often wrote about the Gnostics as those goofy radicals down the street. "It is NOT as the Gnostics say..." (Kind of like how modern Pagans often write about “those fluff bunnies”, even though two thousand years ago we might all be seen as fluff bunnies.)

In regards to the Gnostics, we don’t know more than we know. But what I’ve learned about the Gnostics is that they’ve always been misunderstood. We don’t know who they are now and no one knew who they were then. Which translates to me that anything can be Gnostic, nothing is Gnostic, nothing is not-Gnostic. (Which works out really great for me.)

We know that the Sethians in Egypt were considered to be the first Gnostics, about 200 years or so before Christianity. These people were a sect of radical Jews who were probably inspired by Mediterranean (Greek) mystery traditions. And these Mediterranean mystery traditions were probably inspired by the Ancient Egyptian mystery traditions, which were inspired by God Only Knows. But whoever the Gnostics were, they went on to inspire Christianity, the Kabbalah, Masons, The Golden Dawn, Wiccans, modern Pagans, comic book artists, rock songs, books, movies, and a continuing cycle of inspired texts and prophets (Dick, Hesse, Moore, Smashing Pumpkins, ELO, etc.)

What I love about the early Gnostics was that they just wrote stuff all the time, and some of it is crazy. I get the impression that if there is was aspect about their current Gnostic myth that they didn’t like, they just wrote their own. So this means as a modern person reading this stuff it seems confusing and contradictory, but contradiction only need to exist in religion if one is looking at religion from a literal point of view. But when looking at religion as something that is organic, changeable, and evolving, the Gnostic myths make perfect sense, especially from a Universalist point of view.  We’re all on a path towards God, we know that each path is different. We’re all just wandering around on a crooked path and at the center is God. 

So who were the Gnostics and what did they do? We don’t really know. But what I like to think is that two thousand years ago, Gnostics, Jews, Pagans, Christians, atheists, agnostics and whoever else got together in comfy backrooms every once in a while. I’d like to think that they were all friends. That they sat and breathed together, wrote stupid stories about talking snakes and laughing gods, chanted, raised energy, talked about God, shared wine and bread, laughed, told jokes, had ecstatic moments, and afterword, in the words of my Bishop, they sat around in joy and said “how cool was that?!”

My Life Has Been Saved

Pagan Blog Project - Week Five - C #2 – Joseph Cambpell

 

In 2007 I found Joseph Campbell. My brand-new husband was living in a hotel in North Carolina, and I was in Texas, packing up the duplex and thinking about how my life was going to change so completely. (“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”) I’m a huge fan of documentaries, and I like to put them on in the background while I’m doing other things. I found an online video called the Power of Myth, It sounded like something I’d like, so I put it on, cranked up the volume, and put everything I owned into one box after another. 

Joseph Campbell was a folklorist and a scholar. He traveled the world and he gathered myths and stories from all corners of the globe. (“I don't have to have faith, I have experience.”) He wrote about the Hero Cycle and the Hero’s Journey and myths from all over the world. He inspired scholars and entertainers, writers and poets.

I was familiar with the concept of the hero’s journey because of a Greek myth class I had taken. That class was an eye-opening moment in my life, but that was during my pre-Pagan days, so I looked at the Hero’s Cycle with the eyes of an academic. (“The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.”) It wasn’t until after a few years of intense religious and spiritual study that I was ready for the Hero’s Cycle.

That summer, with nothing but me and my boxes and all of my world’s possessions, Joseph Campbell changed my life. 

It wasn’t just learning about how the Hero’s Cycle manifests in myth, but little real world applications blew my mind. The concept that we are all heroes, all the time, on our own hero journey… wow. (“The experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. Heaven is not the place to have the experience; here is the place to have the experience.”) I remember at one point I was in my living room and Brother Joseph said something so beautiful and profound and paradigm shattering that I just broke down and cried. 

It wasn’t until listening/watching the Power of Myth that I really began to integrate what I had been studying for all those years, that I was really able to internalize the ideas of interconnectedness, Oneness, forgiveness, cycles, beginnings, endings, integration, and all of these other details. It wasn’t until Joseph Campbell that myth changed from being something to read and think about with my mind, but also something I could feel with my heart. ("Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.”)

I broke down and cried because I realized that I no longer had to reject my Christian background. I didn’t have to be a literalist when it came to religion. It was okay to worship the metaphor. It was okay to indulge in ritual and magic. (“All religions are true but none are literal.”) Joseph Campbell was my introduction into Gnosis and mystic Christianity, which prepared me for reading the Jesus Mysteries later that summer. 

It was Joseph Campbell who prepared me for reading thebible, for reading the Gnostic texts, for eventually earning my ordination into what would eventually become the Fellowship of the Sacred Path. He helped recognize my anger with Christianity, which helped me to forgive Jesus. (“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”)

Over the years I’ve tried to proselytize the gospel of Brother Campbell upon my friends and family, with varying success. And I’m delighted when I’ve encountered friends who have had a similar awakening to their own Hero’s Journey. (“The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty 'yes!' to your adventure ”)

I realized I don’t have to be Perseus or Luke Skywalker to have my own Hero’s Journey. We’re all on our own Hero’s Journey all the time. We’re always in this glorious cycle of life, death, rebirth, journeying, underworld travel, dark nights of the soul, etc. (“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That's why it's your path.”) Myth reminds us that we are the heroes! And Joseph Campbell reminds us to follow our bliss, whatever bliss that might be. (“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”) And it will be glorious.