Gnostics is a general name applied to early schools of speculators, which combined the fantastic notions of the oriental systems of religion with the ideas of the Greek philosophers and the doctrines of Christianity. They nearly all agreed on the points that God is incomprehensible; that matter is eternal and antagonistic to God; that creation is the work of the Demiurge, an emanation from the Supreme Deity, subordinate or opposed to God; and that the human nature of Christ was a mere deceptive appearance.
Certain forms of Gnosticism are mere adaptations of the Persian dualism to the solution of the problem of good and evil; while the pantheism of India seems to have been a pervading influence in others. Simon the magician (Simon Magus), of whom Luke speaks in the Acts of the Apostles, is generally looked on as the first of the Gnostics.
The dogmas of the earliest Gnostics may be reduced to the following heads: God, the highest intelligence, dwells at an infinite distance from this world, in the Abyss, removed from all connection with every work of temporal creation. He is the source of all good; matter, the crude, chaotic mass of which all things were made, is, like God, eternal, and is the source of all evil. From these two principles, before time commenced, emanated beings called aeons, which are described as divine spirits, inhabiting the Pleroma, or plenitude of light, which
surrounds the Abyss. The world and the human race were created out of matter by one aeon, the Demiurge, or, according to the later systems of the Gnostics, by several aeons and angels. The aeons made the bodies and the sensual soul of man of this matter; hence the origin of evil in man. God gave man the rational soul; hence the constant struggle of reason with sense. What are called gods by men (for instance, Jehovah, the God of the Jews) are merely such aeons or creators, under whose dominion man became more and more wicked and miserable. To destroy the power of these creators, and to free man from the power of matter, God sent the most exalted of all aeons, to which character Simon first made pretensions.
The Nicolaitans mentioned in the Revelation of St John, so called from Nicolas, a deacon of the church at Jerusalem, were one of the earliest sects, and are described as forerunners of the Cerinthians. Cerinthus, a Jew, of whom John the evangelist seems to have had some knowledge, combined such reveries with the doctrines of Christianity, and maintained that the most elevated aeon sent by God for the salvation of man, was Christ, who had descended upon Jesus, a Jew, in the form of a dove, and through him revealed the doctrines of Christianity, but before the crucifixion of Jesus separated from him, and at the resurrection of the dead will again be united with him, and lay the foundation of a kingdom of the most perfect earthly felicity, to continue 1000 years.
Carpocrates and the sect of the Ophites (beginning of the 2nd century), to whom the term Gnostic was first applied, saw in the Serpent a wise and good being, and carried to its extreme form the inversion of the biblical story. The later Gnostics have been divided into three schools. The first was the Syrian, founded by Menander, a pupil of Simon. This school emphasizes the conflict between Good and Evil - the Supreme Deity on the one hand, and the Demiurge and his angels or aeons on the other. The second was the school of Alexandria, represented by Basilides and Valentinus; the system of the latter being the most complete and ingenious of all. In that light or plenitude, which all the Gnostics speak of as surrounding the residence of the Supreme God, he has placed fifteen male and as many female aeons. The Supreme God, the Unbegotten, the Original Father, whom he also calls the Deep (Bathos), is the first of these aeons; Thinking Silence was his wife, and Intelligence, a male, and Truth, a female, were their children. These produced The Word and Life, the latter a female, who gave birth to mankind and society. These eight constituted the first class of the thirty aeons.
The second class, of five couples, at the end of which stood the Only Begotten, and the third, of six couples, at the head of which stood the Comforter, were, in a similar manner, descended from Mankind and Society, and consisted, like the first, of personified ideas. The officers of this heavenly state are four male aeons - Horus, who guards the boundaries of the region of light; Christ and the Holy Ghost, who instruct the other aeons in their duties; and Jesus, whom all the aeons of the kingdom of light begat in common, and endowed with their gifts. Man and the world were formed by a demiurge out of matter which was partly material, partly spiritual, partly soul-like. Christ, the Saviour of men, when he appeared on earth had a visible body made of the spiritual and the soul-like substance only. At his baptism the aeonJesus united itself with him, and instructed mankind.
A third school of Gnosticism, whose centre was Asia Minor, was represented by Marcion of Pontus, the son of a Christian bishop, who lived about the middle of the 2nd century. Marcion assigned to Christianity, as the one absolutely independent religion, a complete isolation from the Old Testament revelation, the author of which was, in his opinion, merely a just but not a good being. The true God begat many spirits, among which were the creator of the world, the righteous God, and the lawgiver of the Jews. The last, through the prophets, promised Christ; but Jesus, who actually appeared, and is the true Redeemer, was the Son of the truly good God, and not the Jewish Messiah.
Towards the end of the 2nd century Tatian, a Syrian Christian, adopted Gnostic doctrines, and founded a sect. Bardesanes, a Syrian, and Hermogenes, an African, who, in the reign of the Emperor Commodus, apostatized from Christianity, and established sects, bordered, in their hypotheses concerning the origin of good and evil, upon Gnosticism. There have been no Gnostic sects since the 5th century; but many of the principles of their system of emanations reappear in later philosophical systems, drawn from the same sources as theirs. Research Gnostics
The Heptarchia Mystica was a book written by the Elizabethan astrologer and mysticJohn Dee in 1582. He described the work as documenting the divine laws of creation itself. The book notes supposed appearances of various angels and holy spirits to John Dee, and the information they passed on to him regarding the laws of creation and the universe, including the names and seals of numerous angels and divine spirits, the days of the week they governed and the human actions controlled by them. Research Heptarchia Mystica
Iconolatry is the worship of religious symbols or icons.In Christianity iconolatry refers to the worship or adoration of the images of sacred personages connected with the Christian religion, as images intended to represent angels, the Virgin Mary, saints, martyrs, etc. Iconolatry must not be confounded with idolatry, which worships objects as being themselves divine or possessing supernatural power.
The worship or adoration of images was not common in the church for several centuries after Christ, and in its earlier stages it excited strong feelings, especially in the Eastern section of the church, as illustrated by the rise of the Iconoclasts. The second council of Nicasa taught that images were to be retained, but that they were not to be objects of adoration in the strict sense, though it was right to salute, honour, and venerate them, and to burn lights and incense before them. This decree was rejected by Charlemagne and by a council at Frankfort in 794, but the practice of image-worship finally established itself in the West. Roman Catholics maintain that the cultus of images is 'relative,' and that they are not in themselves really adored or honoured, 'but that all adoration and veneration is referred to the prototypes, in as much as images have no dignity or excellence to which such honour properly appertains.' Research Iconolatry
The Carpocratians were a sect of Gnostics of the second century, so called from Carpocrates, a prominent teacher of gnosticism. They maintained that only the soul of Christ went to heaven, that his body would have no resurrection and that the world was made by angels. Research Carpocratians
John Dee was an English astrologer, geographer, mathematician, alchemist and philosopher. He was born in 1527 at London and died in 1608. Educated at London, Chelmsford and at St John's college Cambridge he travelled within Europe lecturing on Euclid and philosophy and became astrologer royal to Mary I and later Elizabeth I. With his assistant, Edward Kelley, he claimed to be in communication with the spirits, who provided him with invocations known as the Enochian Calls, plans for amulets, seals of the angels, the names of angels, demons and other spirits. Perhaps his most important work documenting these spiritual conversations was his 'Heptarchia Mystica'. Research John Dee
The Macedonians were members of a certain Christian religious sect which followed the doctrines of Macedonius, Bishop of Constantinople, in the fourth century. They believed that the Holy Ghost was a creature, like the angels, and a servant of the Father and the Son. Research Macedonian
Sonny Barger is an American motorcyclist. He was born in 1938. He was a founder of the Oakland Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club in 1957. Research Sonny Barger
Alecia Moore, also known as 'Pink', is an American singer and actress. She was born in 1979 at Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Best known as a popular music singer, she started appearing in films in 2002 and appeared in the 2003 film 'Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle'. Research Alecia Moore
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