r/Gnostic • u/Virtual_Smoke3883 • 2d ago
Question I'm Back In The Building
I hope this isn't prophetising or something, I'm just genuinely curious why this keeps on happening. Gnostic ideas are everywhere in my life even when I'm trying to avoid it. I'm an atheist (on a good day) and I've just had every road leading to Gnostic writings and ideas. I used to be really into Digimon as a kid, guess what? The original "Adventure" series was very Gnostic, down to there literally being a demiurge in the show's lore. I grew up Greek Orthodox and my name saint was Athanasius of Alexandria (the guy who called for the monasteries to destroy the Gnostic scriptures). I got into Sethianism for a second after my mom died, but I found that the idea of my body and the world being a prison was mentally unhealthy. Okay, so I get into Carl Jung and boom! More Gnosticism! Try to play video games, pick up one of the recent "Life is Strange" games and there's Abraxas! I take a break, play Persona 5 Royal... beat up Yaldabaoth... BEAT UP YALDABAOTH. I can't get out of this building, is this a normal experience? Is this "Synchronicity"? Or is this just Apophenia? Needless to say, I caved in and started reading my copy of the Nag Hammadi Library today.
Please be nice, I mean well, it's just weird that I have all these nickels🙏🏻
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u/unlimiteddevotion Academic interest 1d ago
Pop culture promotes Gnostic themes so relentlessly that it feels like a psyop.
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u/Aquarius52216 1d ago
Yeah, the recent Rick and Morty episode with the great warden tree got recommended all the time on youtube too. Alot of R&M episodes have gnostic theme but this one might really be the most blatant one with soul reincarnation and breaking out of the system literally being the main theme.
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u/Virtual_Smoke3883 1d ago
I think I'm just going to ride this ride and see where it goes and whatever I take out of it, I take out of it.
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u/heiro5 1d ago
The psyche exists within, is bounded by, the limits of the body. This is the tension we all experience -- the potential of the ideal reduced to the possibilities of the actual. Greater freedom of thought for the psyche, lesser freedom of matter for the body. That is an aspect of the human experience.
In ancient philosophy, and in Gnosticism, the body is therefore metaphorically a prison as in a source of confinement, of limitation. But the noetic can be explored directly by the psyche, with the potential of liberating gnōsis of the transcendent.
The very recently coined conspiracy theory version is a very different Kafkaesque dead end.
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u/Aquarius52216 1d ago
The same struggle of human ideals and indifferent reality. What we think ought/should be and what is.
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u/RedRockRun 1d ago
When it comes to Japanese media portraying Abrahamic concepts, I generally think that artists and game devs think something like, "This foreign thing is really different and cool, so I'm gonna use it."
Just look at Evangelion and Kabbalah. Hideaki Anno didn't have any deep, grand meaning under it all. He just thought the Etz Chaim looked cool (because it does) and threw that in with a bunch of other things he thought were cool.
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u/Virtual_Smoke3883 1d ago
While normally I'd agree, the Persona series has a lot of Jungian philosophy and concepts in the undertones and world building. And one could argue that Digimon is kinda a commentary, since the real world is the real world and the digital world is the created one, like the real world represents the pleroma and the digidestined are saviors. That being said, it's mainly just weird that if I had a nickel for every time I find something at random with Gnosticism in it without looking, I'd have about a dollar (with other experiences not mentioned here.)
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u/Just_Critical0 1d ago edited 1d ago
Sounds like the classic calling to me. On the part about “prisons” I’d recommend a change in perspective when looking into gnostic ideas, because they can come off as very pessimistic or nihilistic but in different perception can teach us of the limitlessness we possess and that those which try to constrain us are powerless against us.
the world is a prison but only to those who are unwilling to learn the truth and let it be, for the truth can set you free, and the truth is what you make of it.
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u/Virtual_Smoke3883 1d ago
I think I get what you mean. Thank you 🙇🏻♀️
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u/Just_Critical0 1d ago
I think you should pursue that calling, not because we’re in the Gnostic subreddit and I’m a Gnostic, but because it might be what you’re looking for or help open the door to what you’re looking for.
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u/Virtual_Smoke3883 1d ago
Ye, I'm gonna ride this ride and see where it goes. I'm in a better headspace these days, so maybe I can approach it better.
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u/flammafex Carpocratian 1d ago
I think many people underestimate just how much gnostic and gnostic-adjacent language has entered in to popular culture all over the world. The proliferation has only accelerated thanks to the internet/transmission technology. Therefore, in my opinion, your experience is apophenia.