I shared some speculation about this triple ritual over a decade ago:
A triple ritual just took place on the occult dates of Walpurgis Night/Beltane in the City of London, the Vatican and the District of Columbia: the royal alchemical wedding, the pope's beatification (resurrection) and the burning/sacrifice of the straw man
Now we have the "Astro" (star) ritual.
"star or celestial body; outer space," from Greek astro-, stem and combining form of astron "star," which is related to aster "star," from PIE root *ster- (2) "star." In ancient Greek, aster typically was "a star" and astron mostly in plural, "the stars." In singular it mostly meant "Sirius" (the brightest star).
Astro=Sirius
These were rituals.
Earth=Sirius
Something big is coming.
Isn’t that syncretic with “his will be done on earth as it is in heaven”? I’ve yet to be convinced the wisdom of the mysteries is incompatible with the unveiling of the wisdom of Christ.
I still would love to see a deep dive on the subject, especially the counterpoints you might raise.
This sub might be a good place for such a discussion?
Not much to discuss. I'm just alluding that the expression "as above so below" is a deliberate twisting of Jesus's words for the purpose of removing the Christian God and replacing any god of anyone's choosing. The whole purpose of mysteries is to sound compatible so that they can continue to exist in hostile cultures. The conflict is generally not in overt doctrine, because the conflicting nature of the doctrine is kept a guarded secret and never officially admitted. The conflict is in the fact that secret oaths are taken, which allows public allegiance to differ from private allegiance, and contradicts the principle that one must believe the universal faith fully.
except, there aren’t even actual “groups” of gnostics/hermetics/etc, and thus there is no-one and no-thing to swear oaths to.
Also I find it odd your issue with “oaths”, yet you put “creeds” (which is another word for oaths) at the top of your “who is righteous” detector.
If “as above, so below” predated the New Testament? Would that change your mind about “not much to discuss” or would you brush that off like your brush off the enuma elish?
Nowadays most people called gnostics are connected to secret-oath societies. In the past, though we have to infer because they are secret, it generally appears that secret knowledge was received by an individual and shared only with those initiates who had sworn sufficient loyalty, and these oaths were deliberately kept from the masses, especially if they contravened the mass cultus. WP examples: Clement of Alexandria says that Valentinus got secret knowledge from Theudas who got it from Paul, who allegedly had an inner circle who learned different things than the public epistles taught. Valentinus Fragment G indicates that Gnostic material overlaps but differs from "publicly available books".
Acceptance of a creed is a public oath, not a secret one. Not about who is righteous, just a content guideline. There's a lot of unrighteousness among professed Christians and a lot of righteousness among those who hesitate at the creeds.
WP also has a nice article on "as above so below" that affirms what I've said. The general issue is whether an early source changes the thrust of the Biblical revelation, which would be the jackpot the anti-Bible crowd seeks. For instance Jesus's Golden Rule is simply a negation of a proverb from Hillel, and is not far from what Aristotle and others taught. But Jesus's framing is original, is most quoted, and is a perfect summary of human living. So knowing the origin and sources doesn't matter much. This is not brushing aside, this is to say whenever I've looked it hasn't changed matters but strengthened them.
Please feel free to cite sources that you think interesting, and I'll always give you the time I can; I find lots of old material that upends modern notions, typically just by reading the Bible and asking about the meanings of the words, but often elsewhere. This week I discovered that the historical Queen Amestris is a good fit for the Biblical Esther, except that Amestris was reportedly much grislier than Esther's just having Haman's ten sons hung (corresponding to Herodotus 7.114). So if Esther was not the lily-white queen often depicted, that's a shakeup I'm wiling to accept; but it doesn't change the fact that she was saved by grace and her story inspires millions today.
u/axolotl_peyotl, absolutely there is evidence of conspiracy in OP, but that conspiracy only serves to set narratives and threaten destinies. Our God has already set the narrative and controls all the destinies, so we don't shake even when the earth does, because we are firmly set in heaven. "So below" doesn't work for them if God prevents the devil from affecting our heaven in any way.
I disagree, I would think that most “gnostics” are merely people who see the confusion of the denominations and think they “know” or “see” a layer of thought normally hidden or obscured (occulted even, sometimes, but surely more people today know the “secrets” of the freemasons than have ever sworn an oath to them, same with crowley-types who claim to practice “magik”).
That is to say, with the dearth of resources available today (and even in certain times in the past. Newton springs to mind as a self-directed seeker who effectively fits what I think is the fair and rational definition of “gnostic”) I think “gnosticism” gets a bad rap by attempts to define it as “illuminati satanism”. Like I’ve tried to explain before, I think the proper definition is “someone seeking the correct interpretation of existence”. I find your definition is always slanted to be able to dismiss it out of hand as blatantly wrong. For example reducible dualism. Every gnostic interpretation I’ve seen has had reducible dualism (pleroma, bythos, monad, etc), yet you define gnosticism as irreducible dualism. Even Taoism, which gets quite skewered by some, has its “dualism” reduced into the monism of the Tao.
Idk where I’m going with this, maybe just picking up where I left off some time back. But uhh yeah, reducible dualism...