My Latest Purchases Thread Mk. III

MajestikMøøse said:
"Esoterism" is what's written on the cover, so I go by that.

It's a book of Guénon's miscellaneus articles on Christian esoteric topics, Christian initiatic mysteries, the further expansion on the topic of allegory in the works of Dante, etc.

From what I can tell, the articles deal more with the initiatic mysteries surrounding the knightly orders around the crusades, Dante, and the Grail mysteries, and has little reference to gnosticism, as the Nag-Hammadi corpus hadn't been discovered yet at the time that Guénon was writing.
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Cool. I'm more interested in very early Christianity. Irenaeus in particular, an early Bishop of Lyon and later of Rome, was a pretty laughable character.

Just finished Elaine Pagels' "The Gnostic Gospels" and wrote some kind of mishmash book review of it. Apparently it was one of the first major works published about the Nag Hammadi findings that was intended to be read by the general public. Sucks because I only read some of it due to time constraints. It's interesting, if simplistic and occasionally misguided.
 
Demilich said:
Cool. I'm more interested in very early Christianity. Irenaeus in particular, an early Bishop of Lyon and later of Rome, was a pretty laughable character.

Just finished Elaine Pagels' "The Gnostic Gospels" and wrote some kind of mishmash book review of it. Apparently it was one of the first major works published about the Nag Hammadi findings that was intended to be read by the general public. Sucks because I only read some of it due to time constraints. It's interesting, if simplistic and occasionally misguided.
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Early Christianity is certainly an interesting topic, although I'm not too huge on the Gnostic stuff yet. I'll probably get around to it eventually, as my main interest is the esoteric aspects that have remained hidden, or pre-Christian initiatic mysteries (which were adopted by Christianity much later) such as the Grail. I've got an english translation of the Nag Hammadi corpus around here that I've been meaning to give a look-see.
 
MajestikMøøse said:
Early Christianity is certainly an interesting topic, although I'm not too huge on the Gnostic stuff yet. I'll probably get around to it eventually, as my main interest is the esoteric aspects that have remained hidden, or pre-Christian initiatic mysteries (which were adopted by Christianity much later) such as the Grail. I've got an english translation of the Nag Hammadi corpus around here that I've been meaning to give a look-see.
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Sounds like you'd be interested in Gnosticism as you got more into it. Though it isn't necessarily a christian movement, it did develop parallel to early Christianity and there were many Christian Gnostic groups. They share some of their origins in Jewish and pagan traditions. Also, gnostic groups tended to be extremely esoteric, making their texts mystical and difficult to comprehend in order to preserve the secret knowledge/gnosis for themselves. Kind of elitist. Fuckers. The orthodox Christians of the time found them to be kinda pompous more often than not, as gnostic understanding entails that the God of the Judeo-Christian creator isn't the supreme power of the universe. As you probably see, if God isn't the all-powerful being he makes himself out to be, the authority of the church of Rome is completely invalidated.

Interesting stuff.
 
Deadly Blessing - Ascend From The Cauldron
Defender - Remaining Tales
Ironsword - Ironsword
Morningstar - Kalevala Mysticism
Attacker - Soultaker

&

mrsmilingjacktshirt5cw.jpg


:kickass:
 
Demilich said:
The professor of my Gnosticism class mentioned this and the NWW album in class, and I told him what I knew about it. He assumed it was just some university student or something who had stumbled across something esoteric and sought to use it to his advantage. I'm not sure how serious Tibet is about this stuff... what do you think, Moose (or others)? I told him I'd get back to him on it, as well as if I bought the album.
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I think that Tibet knows his stuff reasonably well... he's been using gnostic stuff as an influence for over ten years now, and before that he was into Crowley stuff (and therefore Hermeticism), and I know that he must know something of rune magic to an extent, judging by stuff on the Swastikas for Goddy album... so I figure he's reasonably serious about it, just by his history. Not that I've ever attempted a serious esoteric analysis of the album or anything. I could be completely wrong.



Sounds like you'd be interested in Gnosticism as you got more into it. Though it isn't necessarily a christian movement, it did develop parallel to early Christianity and there were many Christian Gnostic groups. They share some of their origins in Jewish and pagan traditions. Also, gnostic groups tended to be extremely esoteric, making their texts mystical and difficult to comprehend in order to preserve the secret knowledge/gnosis for themselves. Kind of elitist. Fuckers. The orthodox Christians of the time found them to be kinda pompous more often than not, as gnostic understanding entails that the God of the Judeo-Christian creator isn't the supreme power of the universe. As you probably see, if God isn't the all-powerful being he makes himself out to be, the authority of the church of Rome is completely invalidated.

Interesting stuff.
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yeah, I haven't any real background in the subject... the whole purpose of the esotericism is to keep the knowledge to a spiritually qualified elite, and mystery religions were by no means an uncommon thing back in those times.

The gnostics thought that human the worst human sin was ignorance though, didn't they?
 
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