Meeting With Kari-- Gnosticism

Yesterday Kari and I met at the library and discussed some of the characteristics of Gnosticism (as well as other things). It was really helpful to ground myself with some knowledge before I set out to write this paper as it's never very much fun to write about something you know nothing about. I guess that writing is also a process of discovery so I should be able to gather more knowledge about Gnosticism while I write this paper.

One of the most interesting things that we talked about was the existence of the demiurge creator God and the Supreme God. From what I understand the demiurge God is the "angry" creator God of the old testament and possibly even understood as a lesser god or non-deity. The Supreme God however is all powerful and . The demiurge reconcilles the existence of evil with the existence of a Supreme omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God because it is in fact the demiurge who propagates the evil forces rather than the Supreme God. Well, I guess the omnipotent Supreme God SHOULD be able to control the demiurge. Anway this demiurge is prone to fits of passion, jealousy, and the like. Basically, the corporeal world, the world one experiences without the inclusion of gnosis, is the world of the demiurge while when one attains gnosis one is experiencing the world of the Supreme God. In that way Jesus was actually bringing gnosis to the world and allowing the

Also I was highly intrigued by the Gnostic interpretation of corporeal matter as being base and somewhat of a distraction for the hidden gnosis behind it. I would like to talk about Docetism-- philosophy that Jesus was never really made man but truly a spirit with an illusory body-- and relate that to how the Bhagavad Gita dissuades Arjuna from doing his duty for corporeal rewards. It would be interesting to talk about how Jesus is transcending his earthly state through his increasing gnosis. I have a lot of other ideas such as theophanies, dreams, epiphanies of gnosis and other things that should make for a good paper.

To sum up my meeting with Kari was very helpful and will provide not only a good basic introduction to gnosticism but also ways to assimilate the topic into my paper. Hopefully I gave Kari some things to think about in her future studies as well!