Jesus says "find your own divine spark and each one of us must discover it" as if that's different; but it sounds the same to me
No, totally different. Gnostics believe the God of the Old Testament, Yahweh is the Demiurge. Same as in the Apocryphon of John "And she called his name Yaltabaoth.". Yahweh occurs more than 6,800 times in the Old Testament, and for good reason, he is the creator of our material world. And he is our creator. Yahweh, the Demiurge, is also a ruler, a jealous god who seeks control. Sofia his mother, and a partial aspect of the divine Pleroma, desired to create something apart from the divine and did this without consent from the Father. Demiurge (Yahweh) having stolen a portion of power from his mother, sets about a work of creation in unconscious imitation of the superior realm. Thus Sophia’s power becomes enclosed within the material forms of humanity, themselves entrapped within the material universe. Sophia (wisdom in Greek) resides in all humans as this divine spark.
Sophia when she realized her mistake she decided to cast her child, the Demiurge, out of the Pleroma. The Demiurge, now alone, believed that he was the only being who had ever existed, and created the material world out of his ignorance, trapping sparks of divinity within Adam and Eve along the way. The Demiurge traps souls within the physical realm, making them forget their divine origin. This makes sense, and there are many examples of this in the Bible. Jesus mission is that of spiritual liberation, and his goal is the awakening of this divine spark of wisdom (Sophia), enabling the enlightened soul to return to the superior, non-material realities which were its primal source.
So far so good. Now, where I disagree with some/many of the gnostics, they conceive the relation of the Demiurge to the Supreme God as one of actual antagonism. The Demiurge thus became the personification of the power of evil (he's not), the Satan of Gnosticism, with whom the faithful had to wage war (they don't) to the end that they might be pleasing to the Good God (it's not). However, it is true John says "has three names: The first name is Yaldabaoth, the second is Saklas, and the third is Samael. He is blind. His power is great. He falsely claimed, 'I am God, and there is no other God beside me.' But he did not know that there exists the true Source above him." - The Apocryphon of John
IMO, the Demiurge, the God of the OT, Yahweh is not evil, far from that. I'll go more in depth about this later, I don't have time now.
Finally, you seem to imply you have an answer as to those who don't desire the burden of responsibility
I don't have the answer, I just raised the question.
differences between those Jews who rejected Jesus and those (Jews) who accepted Jesus
I'm not sure what that means. I know what the Church teaches, with which and I don't agree. Christianity demands something different from every other religion, it doesn't matter how good you are, if you don't believe in Jesus, you will burn in hell forever. Might as well say: accept the Empire narrative and obey, or else.
And here is why I disagree:
Jesus's message: Find the spark within yourself and connect. Inner transformation matters.
Church's message: Worship (accept) Jesus and obey us or be condemned to hell. Belief is everything.
differences between what Jesus did and what Jesus was
Jesus was student under John the Baptist, but he was also a teacher. He was a prophet who never claimed to be God (any God). Now, what he did... he brought a message of spiritual liberation. This message was first of all extremely dangerous to Rome because it told people that imperial power was ultimately meaningless. A dangerous message to the Jews, risking to destroy everything they had work so hard achieve. That is to enslave people. Not only financially, but also from a religious perspective. But a message of liberation to the people:
Find the Divine Spark: He taught that each person has a divine spark connecting them to the ultimate source of love and truth.
How to activate it once you found it: He showed people how... through love, forgiveness, compassion, and inner obedience.
True Freedom: The poor and oppressed are spiritually free. The rich and powerful are trapped in spiritual death.
differences between attributes of Monad and attributes of Dodecad
For the attributes of the Monad I'll direct you once again to the Apocryphon of John: "He is the invisible Spirit... he is more than a god, since there is nothing above him, for no one lords it over him. For he does not exist in something inferior to him, since everything exists in him. For it is he who establishes himself. He is eternal, since he does not need anything. For he is total perfection... he is always completely perfect in light... He is illimitable... He is unsearchable... He is eternal... He is ineffable... He is unnamable... He is immeasurable light.".
Very helpful, James, I'll mull it over and get back to you.
When this came up before, I've said I believe in Samael just fine, but I'm not able to accord him more titles than he clearly deserves, namely Yahweh, Yaldabaoth, Demiurge, or Creator. But then I haven't had opportunity to read the whole Apocryphon through so maybe I should do that first.
Take all the time you need, and definitely read the Apocryphon of John.
Yahweh and Yaldabaoth/the Demiurge are the same entity. Samael is another name of Yaldabaoth that means “god of the blind” to gnostics. However, I know Samael can have a different meaning depending on tradition.
And Yahweh/the Demiurge is the grand architect of the imperfect world we live in. He also created Adam, the first man, but could not grant him a soul due to the absence of his connection with the Pleroma. That's when Sophia stepped in, having already repented, and provided the divine spark. IMO, all by design. But, many would argue Yahweh is the creator of an evil and imperfect world. And they may not be entirely wrong... all you have to do is look around, look at us humans. I rest my case.
IMO, Yahweh created the world this way in order for humans (us) to be able to exist, and it had to be that way. The FALL didn’t occur with Adam & Eve, it happened before the world’s creation with Sophia. But Sophia repented, and the Father agreed to bring her back to the Pleroma once what had become lacking in her (us) was restored to its natural fullness. This is a process which is long, over many lifetimes, but time is of no consequence. Time is infinite, this lifetime is one experiment. If you fail, you'll get another chance. Eventually, you'll figure it out.
The world Yahweh created is specifically designed to make this possible. It operates on a fundamental concept of duality, it is structured by deterministic laws that yield regularity and predictability. In the same time this duality gives rise to the uncertainty that alters our perception of reality and our place within it. It’s like a dream/simulation. Many people believe we live in a simulation, and that includes Elon Musk. Have you ever had that feeling? Hindus believe we live in Brahma's Simulation/Dream. Ancient Hindu wisdom predicted simulation theory thousands of years before The Matrix and Hollywood. And they’re not entirely wrong…
Looks like we just crossed in the mail. So when you make these statements (some with sounds of certainty, some IMO), that's where I ask how we can come to agreement in our search for truth (point (a)). For instance:
all you have to do is look around, look at us humans. I rest my case.
It's not that simple IMHO. There are many answers to why evil exists besides this one and none of them are necessarily right until we start (scientifically) comparing hypotheses and inferring to the best explanation.
The universe is indistinguishable from a sufficiently detailed simulation (Math Universe Hypothesis or MUH) so we are free to call it one, and call it not one, as the context warrants. But you, or I, could propose methods as to point (a) such that we can be more certain of these answers with respect to each other's views.
look at us humans. I rest my case... There are many answers to why evil exists
I said that more or less as a joke. And I wasn't necessarily referring to evil, but, now that you mention... I was thinking more to an imperfect world from a human perspective. For instance humans live to be about 120 years old. However, Most animals’ bodies do not gradually degenerate as they get older the way our bodies do. But for humans once they reach about age of 30 their chance of dying doubles roughly every eight years. That's not true for animals.
OK, why is the world so evil? here is my opinion, but first let's take a look at evil happening in our world today.
Rather than talking about Phoenicians and their children sacrifices, or Romans and their human sacrifices (although they called it triumph), and many others in history, let's look at Gaza where Israel was bombing and still killing people today. Almost half of the population of Gaza is made up by children. What's happening in Gaza is genocide an extreme form of evil. What I would argue though is that the truth is far more disturbing. What is really happening in Gaza is not only genocide but a ritual sacrifice.
Ritual sacrifice happened often in human history. For example the Aztecs. We've dug up temples of the Aztecs and inside the temples are thousands and thousands of human skulls. So before they went to war, they practiced human sacrifice. They would commit mass murder of their enemies in public. I already mentioned the Phoenicians who were famous for a particular type of ritual sacrifice which is child sacrifice. And the Romans that after every major war, they would capture all the major leaders, all their enemies, and they would parade their enemies through the
streets of Rome. This is something called the triumph. At the end of the triumph, they would gather enemies at the temple of their god Jupiter, and then they would strangle to death their enemies.
Why do the Phoenicians, Romans, Aztecs do it? And why is it today the Israelis do it in Gaza? Why? Because 47% almost half of the population of Gaza is under 18 years old. And we can all see it for ourselves, it's almost as though the Israelis
want us to see it and want us to hate them. Why allow horrific videos to be uploaded to the Internet? there are actually much more effective ways of doing that, poisoning the water, vaccines which cause fast cancer. Why bomb the Palestinians on national & global TV? when they could do this secretly and no one would talk about it. IMO, they want the world to hate them because by doing this they create the ultimate taboo. So the entire world will unite against Israel, which is exactly what their religion wants. They believe that at the end of the time, Israel will fight the entire world and God will help Israel triumph in the end. The entire idea of this ritual sacrifice is to unite the Israeli population (and jews all over the world). And they do this, because it works.
What's the worst thing, the most evil thing you can do in a modern society? killing children right? that's evil to everyone, but not to them. They tell each other stories And then these stories become a common myth, a founding myth of why they're here. And they come to believe that God has chosen them to save the world and that's why they're here. Then they will create a new religion and start to develop rituals to reinforce this religion. These rituals include sex, to create intimacy and bonding among them and there'll be a lot of religious rituals as well. But this is not evil to them, only a natural progression... just ask Ghislaine Maxwell (since you can't ask Jeffery Epstein any longer). They've got the capacity to work together. They have a hive mind. They're really energized. They're really inspired. They're really driven. They have a new religion all to themselves. And best of all, it's not EVIL.
his God and their God was not one and the same. That's where they're wrong, they're worshiping to wrong God.
If that is true, it would logically follow that Jesus's Jews and other rabbis' Jews did teach different things. But I don't see the proof that it's true they had different gods. Sofia and her son (Samael) don't come from Jewish tradition but from Grecized Egyptian tradition. Yah doesn't come from Greek or Egyptian tradition but from Hebrew tradition. Therefore when Apocryphon says that Samael is called Yaldabaoth it doesn't mean he automatically gets the rights of the meaning of Yah Sabaoth. Apocryphon might be truly reporting the lies of Samael's followers. For someone who doesn't understand the Near East cult of Yah to look at Yah's attributes very casually and say, oh sure, Yah must be exactly Samael, would be to fail all principles of comparative religion by comparing apples to scorpions.
And that's what I mean by (1), asking where these two Jewish movements differ. Yes, they differed in practices, but not clearly in theology. If you don't like the later church's theology, that's fine, we don't have to bring that up because we're focusing on the theology taught by Jesus. In particular you're right to note that the framing "if you don't believe in Jesus, you will burn in hell forever" is suspect because so much is missing; but that's a side point. On the main line, it seems that we'd need to come to agreement on methods of how to read and interpret sources to determine whether Jesus's Jews and other rabbis' Jews had different gods in their original theology. Transformation and belief in truth (knowledge, trust) are both essential and always accompany each other: transformation means there's belief, and belief means there's transformation.
Jesus isn't saying "follow me" or "worship me."
IMHO "Follow me" is one of the most certain things the historical Jesus said. He didn't say "worship me" (who does?), but I've documented that the words for "worship" meant quite a few different things than we expect (even latria), and so when people bowed to Jesus respectfully that fell under several words for "worship" and was considered worship (even if we don't count it to have that meaning today). But, more important (if I can use Paul), the way we follow Jesus is exactly the way we follow other leaders, and in bowing cultures we bow to Jesus in the way we bow to other leaders. When you get to latria, it is only offered to the Father, but it can be offered through the physical image of God in humans and that's the direction latria should be taken (worship God who is in us).
So for (2) it's not essential to argue about the specifics of claiming to be a god, but (again) claiming many different powers and titles of divinity is very tied up with Jesus's narrative. And whenever you think about divinity in any human you find that Jesus was so one with the Monad that, whatever attribute you think of, he had first. He didn't intend us to be separate from him but that we would all be one in a many-membered "body of Christ". So, just as his nature and message align perfectly, so should ours. You make a decent description of the message and so our message, and our spark of divinity, must be united just as his was.
Sofia his mother, and a partial aspect of the divine Pleroma, desired to create something apart from the divine and did this without consent from the Father. Demiurge (Yahweh) having stolen a portion of power from his mother, sets about a work of creation in unconscious imitation of the superior realm.
I've heard this, but I don't understand how we can classify these Dodecad offshoots as "good" or "not evil" if we're also calling them nonconsensual and thieving and mistaken and false. It's also not a cosmology that particularly appeals to historical truth claims better than say Zeus and Hera do. One issue is that this life involves doing physical good, and so a message of focusing solely on some other life that is not something we generally experience is an extraordinary claim that I'd ask for greater proofs of. So I appreciate your speaking so forthrightly and yet I ask the same questions of the meaning of these things that I ask others who raise similar points.
So in question (3) you give an excellent definition of the Monad. What I don't understand is why we should give any credit or value to Samael. For instance I use the word "Yah" (self-existence) to mean precisely "It is he who establishes himself", so I don't believe in awarding its forms freely to Samael (who isn't even an original of the Dodecad but an offspring).
TLDR: (a) All that is just for me to categorize and seek to enfold your thoughts. When it comes to specifics (and any debate), we are likely to begin to question which documents weigh more heavily than which if we get to a hard disagreement. I like to preclude that instead, by first asking how we would jointly use documents and inner revelation and other sources in some objective, agreed way so that we can come to the same answers with the relative certainty of math and science. That is, not calling something right or wrong by appeal to authority, but by making inferences to the best explanations. If you're someone who pursues the truth at all costs then right evaluation of revelations shouldn't be an issue.
(b) Your exposition puts you very close to one Conspiracies regular, and significantly close to the moderator of another forum I referred to. Neither are very aligned to traditional Christendom but both state they uphold original Christianity. If you'd like me to get these two folks involved, I can ping them, but I don't want to do so if you're wanting to keep it between us two for now. There is also another moderator I alluded to whose thoughts are pretty close to mine but who might be too traditional for you; that person will probably be along in time sooner or later too.
No, totally different. Gnostics believe the God of the Old Testament, Yahweh is the Demiurge. Same as in the Apocryphon of John "And she called his name Yaltabaoth.". Yahweh occurs more than 6,800 times in the Old Testament, and for good reason, he is the creator of our material world. And he is our creator. Yahweh, the Demiurge, is also a ruler, a jealous god who seeks control. Sofia his mother, and a partial aspect of the divine Pleroma, desired to create something apart from the divine and did this without consent from the Father. Demiurge (Yahweh) having stolen a portion of power from his mother, sets about a work of creation in unconscious imitation of the superior realm. Thus Sophia’s power becomes enclosed within the material forms of humanity, themselves entrapped within the material universe. Sophia (wisdom in Greek) resides in all humans as this divine spark.
Sophia when she realized her mistake she decided to cast her child, the Demiurge, out of the Pleroma. The Demiurge, now alone, believed that he was the only being who had ever existed, and created the material world out of his ignorance, trapping sparks of divinity within Adam and Eve along the way. The Demiurge traps souls within the physical realm, making them forget their divine origin. This makes sense, and there are many examples of this in the Bible. Jesus mission is that of spiritual liberation, and his goal is the awakening of this divine spark of wisdom (Sophia), enabling the enlightened soul to return to the superior, non-material realities which were its primal source.
So far so good. Now, where I disagree with some/many of the gnostics, they conceive the relation of the Demiurge to the Supreme God as one of actual antagonism. The Demiurge thus became the personification of the power of evil (he's not), the Satan of Gnosticism, with whom the faithful had to wage war (they don't) to the end that they might be pleasing to the Good God (it's not). However, it is true John says "has three names: The first name is Yaldabaoth, the second is Saklas, and the third is Samael. He is blind. His power is great. He falsely claimed, 'I am God, and there is no other God beside me.' But he did not know that there exists the true Source above him." - The Apocryphon of John
IMO, the Demiurge, the God of the OT, Yahweh is not evil, far from that. I'll go more in depth about this later, I don't have time now.
I don't have the answer, I just raised the question.
I'm not sure what that means. I know what the Church teaches, with which and I don't agree. Christianity demands something different from every other religion, it doesn't matter how good you are, if you don't believe in Jesus, you will burn in hell forever. Might as well say: accept the Empire narrative and obey, or else.
And here is why I disagree:
Jesus was student under John the Baptist, but he was also a teacher. He was a prophet who never claimed to be God (any God). Now, what he did... he brought a message of spiritual liberation. This message was first of all extremely dangerous to Rome because it told people that imperial power was ultimately meaningless. A dangerous message to the Jews, risking to destroy everything they had work so hard achieve. That is to enslave people. Not only financially, but also from a religious perspective. But a message of liberation to the people:
For the attributes of the Monad I'll direct you once again to the Apocryphon of John: "He is the invisible Spirit... he is more than a god, since there is nothing above him, for no one lords it over him. For he does not exist in something inferior to him, since everything exists in him. For it is he who establishes himself. He is eternal, since he does not need anything. For he is total perfection... he is always completely perfect in light... He is illimitable... He is unsearchable... He is eternal... He is ineffable... He is unnamable... He is immeasurable light.".
Very helpful, James, I'll mull it over and get back to you.
When this came up before, I've said I believe in Samael just fine, but I'm not able to accord him more titles than he clearly deserves, namely Yahweh, Yaldabaoth, Demiurge, or Creator. But then I haven't had opportunity to read the whole Apocryphon through so maybe I should do that first.
Take all the time you need, and definitely read the Apocryphon of John.
Yahweh and Yaldabaoth/the Demiurge are the same entity. Samael is another name of Yaldabaoth that means “god of the blind” to gnostics. However, I know Samael can have a different meaning depending on tradition.
And Yahweh/the Demiurge is the grand architect of the imperfect world we live in. He also created Adam, the first man, but could not grant him a soul due to the absence of his connection with the Pleroma. That's when Sophia stepped in, having already repented, and provided the divine spark. IMO, all by design. But, many would argue Yahweh is the creator of an evil and imperfect world. And they may not be entirely wrong... all you have to do is look around, look at us humans. I rest my case.
IMO, Yahweh created the world this way in order for humans (us) to be able to exist, and it had to be that way. The FALL didn’t occur with Adam & Eve, it happened before the world’s creation with Sophia. But Sophia repented, and the Father agreed to bring her back to the Pleroma once what had become lacking in her (us) was restored to its natural fullness. This is a process which is long, over many lifetimes, but time is of no consequence. Time is infinite, this lifetime is one experiment. If you fail, you'll get another chance. Eventually, you'll figure it out.
The world Yahweh created is specifically designed to make this possible. It operates on a fundamental concept of duality, it is structured by deterministic laws that yield regularity and predictability. In the same time this duality gives rise to the uncertainty that alters our perception of reality and our place within it. It’s like a dream/simulation. Many people believe we live in a simulation, and that includes Elon Musk. Have you ever had that feeling? Hindus believe we live in Brahma's Simulation/Dream. Ancient Hindu wisdom predicted simulation theory thousands of years before The Matrix and Hollywood. And they’re not entirely wrong…
Looks like we just crossed in the mail. So when you make these statements (some with sounds of certainty, some IMO), that's where I ask how we can come to agreement in our search for truth (point (a)). For instance:
It's not that simple IMHO. There are many answers to why evil exists besides this one and none of them are necessarily right until we start (scientifically) comparing hypotheses and inferring to the best explanation.
The universe is indistinguishable from a sufficiently detailed simulation (Math Universe Hypothesis or MUH) so we are free to call it one, and call it not one, as the context warrants. But you, or I, could propose methods as to point (a) such that we can be more certain of these answers with respect to each other's views.
I said that more or less as a joke. And I wasn't necessarily referring to evil, but, now that you mention... I was thinking more to an imperfect world from a human perspective. For instance humans live to be about 120 years old. However, Most animals’ bodies do not gradually degenerate as they get older the way our bodies do. But for humans once they reach about age of 30 their chance of dying doubles roughly every eight years. That's not true for animals.
The theory of everything, this is a deep rabbit hole. Meantime take a look at "Are We Living in a Brahma's Simulation? The Hindu Maya Theory Explained".
OK, why is the world so evil? here is my opinion, but first let's take a look at evil happening in our world today.
Rather than talking about Phoenicians and their children sacrifices, or Romans and their human sacrifices (although they called it triumph), and many others in history, let's look at Gaza where Israel was bombing and still killing people today. Almost half of the population of Gaza is made up by children. What's happening in Gaza is genocide an extreme form of evil. What I would argue though is that the truth is far more disturbing. What is really happening in Gaza is not only genocide but a ritual sacrifice.
Ritual sacrifice happened often in human history. For example the Aztecs. We've dug up temples of the Aztecs and inside the temples are thousands and thousands of human skulls. So before they went to war, they practiced human sacrifice. They would commit mass murder of their enemies in public. I already mentioned the Phoenicians who were famous for a particular type of ritual sacrifice which is child sacrifice. And the Romans that after every major war, they would capture all the major leaders, all their enemies, and they would parade their enemies through the streets of Rome. This is something called the triumph. At the end of the triumph, they would gather enemies at the temple of their god Jupiter, and then they would strangle to death their enemies.
Why do the Phoenicians, Romans, Aztecs do it? And why is it today the Israelis do it in Gaza? Why? Because 47% almost half of the population of Gaza is under 18 years old. And we can all see it for ourselves, it's almost as though the Israelis want us to see it and want us to hate them. Why allow horrific videos to be uploaded to the Internet? there are actually much more effective ways of doing that, poisoning the water, vaccines which cause fast cancer. Why bomb the Palestinians on national & global TV? when they could do this secretly and no one would talk about it. IMO, they want the world to hate them because by doing this they create the ultimate taboo. So the entire world will unite against Israel, which is exactly what their religion wants. They believe that at the end of the time, Israel will fight the entire world and God will help Israel triumph in the end. The entire idea of this ritual sacrifice is to unite the Israeli population (and jews all over the world). And they do this, because it works.
What's the worst thing, the most evil thing you can do in a modern society? killing children right? that's evil to everyone, but not to them. They tell each other stories And then these stories become a common myth, a founding myth of why they're here. And they come to believe that God has chosen them to save the world and that's why they're here. Then they will create a new religion and start to develop rituals to reinforce this religion. These rituals include sex, to create intimacy and bonding among them and there'll be a lot of religious rituals as well. But this is not evil to them, only a natural progression... just ask Ghislaine Maxwell (since you can't ask Jeffery Epstein any longer). They've got the capacity to work together. They have a hive mind. They're really energized. They're really inspired. They're really driven. They have a new religion all to themselves. And best of all, it's not EVIL.
Going back to the earlier statement then:
If that is true, it would logically follow that Jesus's Jews and other rabbis' Jews did teach different things. But I don't see the proof that it's true they had different gods. Sofia and her son (Samael) don't come from Jewish tradition but from Grecized Egyptian tradition. Yah doesn't come from Greek or Egyptian tradition but from Hebrew tradition. Therefore when Apocryphon says that Samael is called Yaldabaoth it doesn't mean he automatically gets the rights of the meaning of Yah Sabaoth. Apocryphon might be truly reporting the lies of Samael's followers. For someone who doesn't understand the Near East cult of Yah to look at Yah's attributes very casually and say, oh sure, Yah must be exactly Samael, would be to fail all principles of comparative religion by comparing apples to scorpions.
And that's what I mean by (1), asking where these two Jewish movements differ. Yes, they differed in practices, but not clearly in theology. If you don't like the later church's theology, that's fine, we don't have to bring that up because we're focusing on the theology taught by Jesus. In particular you're right to note that the framing "if you don't believe in Jesus, you will burn in hell forever" is suspect because so much is missing; but that's a side point. On the main line, it seems that we'd need to come to agreement on methods of how to read and interpret sources to determine whether Jesus's Jews and other rabbis' Jews had different gods in their original theology. Transformation and belief in truth (knowledge, trust) are both essential and always accompany each other: transformation means there's belief, and belief means there's transformation.
IMHO "Follow me" is one of the most certain things the historical Jesus said. He didn't say "worship me" (who does?), but I've documented that the words for "worship" meant quite a few different things than we expect (even latria), and so when people bowed to Jesus respectfully that fell under several words for "worship" and was considered worship (even if we don't count it to have that meaning today). But, more important (if I can use Paul), the way we follow Jesus is exactly the way we follow other leaders, and in bowing cultures we bow to Jesus in the way we bow to other leaders. When you get to latria, it is only offered to the Father, but it can be offered through the physical image of God in humans and that's the direction latria should be taken (worship God who is in us).
So for (2) it's not essential to argue about the specifics of claiming to be a god, but (again) claiming many different powers and titles of divinity is very tied up with Jesus's narrative. And whenever you think about divinity in any human you find that Jesus was so one with the Monad that, whatever attribute you think of, he had first. He didn't intend us to be separate from him but that we would all be one in a many-membered "body of Christ". So, just as his nature and message align perfectly, so should ours. You make a decent description of the message and so our message, and our spark of divinity, must be united just as his was.
I've heard this, but I don't understand how we can classify these Dodecad offshoots as "good" or "not evil" if we're also calling them nonconsensual and thieving and mistaken and false. It's also not a cosmology that particularly appeals to historical truth claims better than say Zeus and Hera do. One issue is that this life involves doing physical good, and so a message of focusing solely on some other life that is not something we generally experience is an extraordinary claim that I'd ask for greater proofs of. So I appreciate your speaking so forthrightly and yet I ask the same questions of the meaning of these things that I ask others who raise similar points.
So in question (3) you give an excellent definition of the Monad. What I don't understand is why we should give any credit or value to Samael. For instance I use the word "Yah" (self-existence) to mean precisely "It is he who establishes himself", so I don't believe in awarding its forms freely to Samael (who isn't even an original of the Dodecad but an offspring).
TLDR: (a) All that is just for me to categorize and seek to enfold your thoughts. When it comes to specifics (and any debate), we are likely to begin to question which documents weigh more heavily than which if we get to a hard disagreement. I like to preclude that instead, by first asking how we would jointly use documents and inner revelation and other sources in some objective, agreed way so that we can come to the same answers with the relative certainty of math and science. That is, not calling something right or wrong by appeal to authority, but by making inferences to the best explanations. If you're someone who pursues the truth at all costs then right evaluation of revelations shouldn't be an issue.
(b) Your exposition puts you very close to one Conspiracies regular, and significantly close to the moderator of another forum I referred to. Neither are very aligned to traditional Christendom but both state they uphold original Christianity. If you'd like me to get these two folks involved, I can ping them, but I don't want to do so if you're wanting to keep it between us two for now. There is also another moderator I alluded to whose thoughts are pretty close to mine but who might be too traditional for you; that person will probably be along in time sooner or later too.