A Subscriber Questions the Basics

Welcome to Gnostic Insights and the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. Before I get into this week’s episode, let me tell you that the entire uninterrupted interview with Bishop Nathan Wilson of The Gnostic Union is now available on YouTube under Cyd Ropp Gnostic Insights playlist. I’ve tried and tried to upload the captioned transcript underneath the video, but neither YouTube nor my video editing software will cooperate. I can only chalk it up to Demiurgic interference, so this must be one important interview! The link is provided here to go straight to it on YouTube. Please “like” it and forward it to friends. Thanks.

This week I exchanged emails with a podcast subscriber that presented me with some excellent questions prompted by recent episodes. I asked his permission to share them with you anonymously. I always treasure sincere observations and questions from subscibers because it prompts my gnosis. So here we go.

Hi Cyd how’s it going? I hope that all is well with you. I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed your series of podcasts with the Bishop. Very interesting to hear some stuff on the unpacking of the original Gnostic texts. I thought that today’s pod about your discussion was also very revealing as somebody who loves history, but it’s giving me an insight into why you are so suspicious of history—would I be right in thinking that you want your texts to be unfiltered from various historical takes from different flawed human recounters?

Yes. It is a common saying that history is written by the victors. This refers to the fact that the winners of wars, both physical killing wars and more subtle ideological wars, write the narratives of their opponents from then on. This is why we have had a couple of thousand years of hearing only one side of the gnostic story and one conventionally accepted version of Christian theology. And we have heard that version from Catholic Councils of the 4th century on down through the Protestant churches of today. The surviving descriptions of the nature of gnosticism were written by those who hated gnosticism, and their work is still read and venerated to this day. And I can tell you that even in the little village I live in, the church folks who have no idea what gnosticism even is are dead set against it and dead set against my efforts of sharing my gnostic insights with them and others—and they let me know of their disapproval.

I think these divisive times we are living through now also illustrate how what passes for truth is malleable and untrustworthy. We can all see for ourselves how half of the population characterizes the big picture one way and half of the population characterizes it in a completely different way—and these two sides of the ideological divide are incommensurate with each other. Incommensurate is one of those big words I learned during my graduate studies in rhetoric. It means exclusive—both can’t be right—you can’t hold both positions—it’s either or. So if you extrapolate the culture wars forward a few hundred or a few thousand years into the future, how will history frame the disputes that are currently raging through society? If, for example, socialism finally wins out do you think capitalism will be fairly represented? The reverse is also true, and the winner of this tug of war will be the one who lives to tells the tale.

My correspondent goes on to say:

I think it must be very appealing to be able to narrow down everything into one text and say that we are only going to look at this one source of right thing for the true knowledge. I think this approach has led us to the Bible and the Koran and other food containers which some followers take quite literally and interpret very strictly. There must be safety and comfort in this approach which could be described as textual at best—literal and possibly in a kind way, and without any judgement, fundamentalist, in its true essence. However, and I expect you are waiting for the but… What is listening whilst