A Simple Explanation of Gnostic Cosmology

Notice: There is now a separate blog dedicated to the New Gnostic Gospel. You can get there by clicking here. This was the original mapping of the new Gnostic Gospel. These concepts have been more colorfully illustrated, although the original mapping still holds up. You may find all of this in its most simple form in my book, The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated.

Since people are still landing on and reading this post, let me tell you that this has been laid out and beautifully illustrated in "The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated" book. 

I also have a podcast now dedicated to fully explaining all of these Gnostic concepts in Simple Explanation form. click here to go to Gnostic Insights

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Here's a first look at what I've been working on lately [back in 2015]. I'll be writing an article about the Gnostic gospels soon. Meanwhile, I thought you might enjoy these first fruits. 

Gnostic Cosmology according to the Tripartite Tractate, by Cyd Ropp, Ph.D.

These diagrams are my visual representations of the "Tripartite Tractate." The Tripartite Tractate is one book of the collection known as the Nag Hammadi scriptures that were discovered buried in the Egyptian desert in 1945. The Nag Hammadi texts were buried sometime in the 3rd century by monks who sought to preserve and protect them from those who wanted to weed them out as heresies as they designed the official shape of the Christian religion. 

After studying the Tripartite Tractate, I can see why the early Pope did not want this to make it into the Bible.  For one thing, the Christ figure, the "Son of God," is not all perfect and all powerful, as portrayed in the Christian Bible; matter of fact, Logos is directly implicated in the Fall. For another thing, salvation is a personal, mystical affair conferred directly by the Father through Logos, not something conferred by preaching or baptism. Thirdly, the cosmology presented here makes clear that those who, shall we say, struggle for righteousness against a sinful world are not necessarily doing God's work, but are caught in an endless war against the "evil doers," and have themselves fallen into some sort of earthly death trap. 

As I said, the complete article is underway. Meanwhile, for those of you who want to get started, here it is in picture form. On the big poster above, start at the upper left corner and read clockwise. Our earthly situation is portrayed in the middle of the diagram. Salvation and the end of the world comes in the form of the pyramid at the lower left. Below are various sections of the diagram presented on their own. If you have already been studying Gnostic cosmology, these diagrams will clarify various terms and activities. If you haven't already been studying this, then these diagrams will be super confusing so don't worry about it. All will be revealed in good time. 

In terms of A Simple Explanation, this cosmology begins prior to "in the beginning..." and proceeds through the formation of Units of Consciousness and the appearance of our physical universe, and concludes with the final collapse of the universe.  It also takes place during the life cycle of each and every Unit of Consciousness, as it is a Fractal Pattern that repeats itself over and over again. Those of you who have read A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything will recognize the role of the hierarchical distribution and the role of toroidal flow in the final reorganization of creation.  

The First Glory, The Son of the Father. First differentiation after the Undifferentiated Unity of the Metaversal Father.

The Second Glory. The Son has realized it is comprised of many traits of the Father. These traits are called "aeons" in Gnostic terminology. When they're all grouped together they are called the Fullness, or the All. Many differentiations but total harmony. Once these traits are named, they fall out of undifferentiated harmony and rearrange themselves into the pyramidal hierarchy depicted below.

The Fruit of the Third Glory is the offspring of the All in perfect arrangement of hierarchy. This stage in creation is known as the First Order of Powers. Everyone and everything knows its place and is happy.  The final Aeon to arrive at the top of the pyramid, known in the Tripartite Tractate as "Presumptuous Thought," looks down at the hierarchy and sees them all arranged underneath him. This gives that Aeon the idea that he is in charge of the pyramid. He reaches upward to reinsert the pyramid into the Metaverse. This is done without authorization or position. This results in The Fall.

The Fall tumbles the pyramid of Aeons out of arrangement. They Fall into confusion, Chaos. They are dispersed and alone for the first time, cut off from each other and the All. This is now called the Deficiency, and the Imitation. Logos panics and abandons the Imitation and retreats back to the All. God the Father also retreats in horror from the Deficiency, which throws up a Boundary containing the Imitation. Logos and the All try to rescue their abandoned children by praying for them and thus giving them the Remembrance of Who and What they used to be, before the Fall.

The prayers of Logos and the All results in the Second Order of Powers. There are now two types of creatures: those of the Deficiency who have no belief in who or what came before, and those of the Remembrance, who have come to themselves through "Repentance" and "Conversion" and recall their fellow Aeons and their place with the Father in the Fullness. Rather than rejoining Logos and the All, those of the Remembrance choose to do battle with those of the Imitation. They are locked in an endless righteous War where no one can win.

 Release from the Endless War comes by intervention of the Father and the Fullness working together. They produce the Living Image of the All and the Father--the Christ. The Christ places himself upon the Lost like a garment that restores perfection and fills the Lost with inexpressible Joy, giving them the Logos that enables them to detach and dispel delusion. This results in the Third Order of Powers--the Aeons of the Images--that now carry within themselves the Seed of the Word.

The final Order of Creation is called The Economy and The Consolidation. All three types of creatures are represented: those of the imitation, those of the remembrance, and those who have been redeemed by Christ. This drawing is a pyramidal shaped "core sample" of creation. The small figure at the lower right is a cutaway view of creation, with the center of the donut mapping to the top of the pyramid.