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rynlingGnosticism isn’t a religion; it’s a term that describes a set of religious tendencies that were common in the ancient world around the time of Jesus. Trade was flourishing, and ideas were being exchanged along the Silk Road. People from many different cultures would congregate in cities like Damascus, Jerusalem, Persepolis, and Rome, and there were all sorts of street preachers and mystics claiming they could do magic. The basic principles of this magic were as follows:
1. There is an Absolute Truth to the universe.
2. Our phenomenal world is a reflection of that truth,
3. but unfortunately, the reality we perceive is an imperfect reflection.
4. If you understand the Absolute, you can make the world more perfect
5. by speaking or writing the Truth of what should be.
By “speaking or writing the Truth,” I’m talking about chanting magic spells or creating talismans. It should probably be said that there was a lot of meditation, fasting, medicinal hallucinogenic aids, and just plain mental illness going around. Still, a lot of more established religious traditions were competing with each other, so it was helpful to have an esoteric priesthood who could do magic. This is basically what Kabbalah and Mandaeism are, and we all know how this worked out for what eventually became the Catholic Church.
So Gnosticism is basically the idea that, if you understand the Absolute Truth of the universe, you can reshape reality. This puts people who can read on the same footing as the divine, so it was generally frowned upon by more established religions (that nevertheless had their own esoteric traditions). As a result, the beliefs and ritual practices associated with Gnosticism fell out of favor around 100CE.
However! In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when European countries started colonizing the countries along the Silk Road, two intellectual currents emerged and became mainstream. First, there was a glorification of Rome, which was considered to be a good model for empire building. The teenage children of the elite in countries like England, France, and Germany would learn Greek and Latin, and they would do tours of Italy to study ruins and statues. Second, wealthy European scholars who called themselves “Orientalists” would travel to conquered (or soon to be conquered) territories along the Silk Road to study their cultures, languages, and religious traditions.
What emerged from these two strands of fascination with the ancient world was a revival of Gnosticism, which evolved into a mainstream movement in the nineteenth century in the form of Spiritualism. Spiritualism was never formally codified as a religion, but it’s basically all that Arthur Conan Doyle nonsense where people believed that you could see fairies and talk to ghosts and so on.
Spiritualism was popular throughout Europe, and it also became one of the big new religious movements of the “Third Great Awakening” in the United States. Unlike more congregation-based movements such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Church of Latter Day Saints, Spiritualist beliefs never really coalesced into a formal religious doctrine. Still, one of the more tangible manifestations of Spiritualism was the Theosophical Society, which was founded in 1875 by a Russian expat named Helena Blavatsky.
Madame Blavatsky was rich, and her two great loves were sexy séances and “Oriental” culture. She wrote two books based on her ideas, Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine. I’ve only read excerpts from these books, which was more than enough. They’re very silly. To summarize, the Theosophy movement based on Blavatsky’s writings was strongly inspired by Gnosticism. Its core tenets are that:
1. There is an Absolute Truth underlying the material universe.
2. All contemporary religions are therefore offshoots of an ur-religion.
3. Ascended Masters like Moses, Jesus, and Mohamed had access to Absolute Truth,
4. and they continue to dwell in a separate realm from which they can communicate
5. with members of a secret society of heroes called the Great White Brotherhood.
This all feels very YA urban fantasy, and it’s worth noting that Madame Blavatsky had an imaginary South Asian boyfriend named “Koot Hoomi” who served as one of her spirit guides at the séances she hosted. Apparently this was a little too cringe, so Koot Hoomi has since been renamed as “Rishi Kuthumi.” Which is somehow supposed to be less cringe? Anyway.
According to ST Joshi, HP Lovecraft thought all of this was ridiculous, but he was inspired by Blavatsky’s idea that all religions are attempts to communicate a truth too vast and terrible for human comprehension. For Lovecraft, that “truth” was that space is filled with giant tentacle monsters. Through correspondence with his close male friends, Lovecraft gradually worked out an entire mythos surrounding manly men being harassed by large tentacles. In a totally no homo way of course lmao.
Putting tentacles aside for the moment, the idea of the Necronomicon is borrowed from gnostic beliefs. The Necronomicon, which supposedly originated in the Rub' al Khali (the desert occupying the south of the Arabian Peninsula), essentially functions as a gnostic historiola.
Historiolas don’t exist in contemporary religions, but they were fairly common in ancient religions. The idea was that the act of reading a text functioned as a magic ritual. If you read a historiola out loud, or if you copied it out by hand, this would grant you power and allow you to invoke the magic contained within that specific combination of words. This is different from a regular magic spell in that a historiola is an entire book (or scroll, or set of tablets, etc).
Although the exact nature of the Necronomicon was left purposefully vague, the consensus seems to be that the act of reading the book allows the lector to erase the division between dimensions, thus potentially inviting tentacle monsters into our world.
To be super nerdy for a second, Lovecraft’s giant tentacle monsters are separate from “the Old Ones,” a term that refers to several species of sentient beings who lived on the earth in distant prehistoric times. Cthulhu is one of the Old Ones, and he’s scary precisely because he wants to summon deep space horrorterrors such as Yog-Sothoth, who is the tutelary deity of Cthulhu’s people.
Lovecraft protagonists are constantly being threatened by large tentacled creatures called shoggoths, which are generic beasts of burden created and bred by a fungal race of Old Ones. Since shoggoths have high rates of cellular regeneration and are essentially deathless if left to their own devices, a few of them are still lurking about underground in places like Antarctica and… Boston I guess.
Lovecraft’s stories don’t make a lot of sense, but what I think is supposed to be going on is that Cthulhu is sleeping in an underwater city; and, by communicating through dreams, he’s trying to influence the current race of people on the earth – humans – to recreate the ritual that will summon the Elder Gods. The Necronomicon is a product of Cthulhu’s dream transmissions. Because the book has been destroyed and recreated and translated so many times, the historiola doesn’t work properly, and the ritual of reading it is imperfect. Instead of opening a door between worlds, you just get shitty shoggoths.
So in the story I’m writing, the grad student studying Gnosticism at Miskatonic University is reading a printout of a crusty PDF of a shitty lo-fi scan of a dubious copy of the original Arabic Necronomicon, the Kitab al-Azif. What little magic still exists in this text is invoked by the grad student’s handwritten translation-in-progress. Unfortunately for him, the ritual is extremely corrupted, and he accidentally starts to turn himself into a shoggoth.
Basically, the grad student grows tentacles. Are they sexy tentacles? I like to think so, but that depends on whether the story is accepted for tradpub.
Anyway, as a side note, I actually used to live a few doors down from the United Lodge of Theosophists. The building currently houses a public library, and they host free weekly public lectures on world religions. You can walk right in and pick up all sorts of pamphlets if you like, and the interior architecture is very cool. If you’re interested, you can read about the building’s history and see some photos on the Hidden City Philadelphia website here: https://hiddencityphila.org/2012/03/blavatskys-castle-of-the-occult-on-rittenhouse-square/
From this article, I learned that Madame Blavatsky actually lived in West Philadelphia and operated séances out of her house on Samson Street. I thought I recognized the address, and sure enough, her residence was preserved as the White Dog Café. The restaurant was apparently named for Blavatsky’s dog, who would relieve people’s joint pain by licking their hands and knees.
The White Dog Café raised their prices during the pandemic, which sucks, but I’d still recommend at least getting lunch there if you’re ever in Philadelphia. The food is worth the money, and the interior of that townhouse is amazing. My favorite thing on the menu is their homemade vanilla ice cream complimented with freshly baked dogbone-shaped sugar cookies. Oh and I guess the building is haunted maybe.
ETA: I went to the White Dog Café for lunch the day after I wrote this. It's good, but maybe not worth the money. They also redecorated, and the interior is now a generic sort of New American Modern. Me and my friend spent like $75 on two sandwiches and some ice cream, and we did not see a single ghost.
1. There is an Absolute Truth to the universe.
2. Our phenomenal world is a reflection of that truth,
3. but unfortunately, the reality we perceive is an imperfect reflection.
4. If you understand the Absolute, you can make the world more perfect
5. by speaking or writing the Truth of what should be.
By “speaking or writing the Truth,” I’m talking about chanting magic spells or creating talismans. It should probably be said that there was a lot of meditation, fasting, medicinal hallucinogenic aids, and just plain mental illness going around. Still, a lot of more established religious traditions were competing with each other, so it was helpful to have an esoteric priesthood who could do magic. This is basically what Kabbalah and Mandaeism are, and we all know how this worked out for what eventually became the Catholic Church.
So Gnosticism is basically the idea that, if you understand the Absolute Truth of the universe, you can reshape reality. This puts people who can read on the same footing as the divine, so it was generally frowned upon by more established religions (that nevertheless had their own esoteric traditions). As a result, the beliefs and ritual practices associated with Gnosticism fell out of favor around 100CE.
However! In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when European countries started colonizing the countries along the Silk Road, two intellectual currents emerged and became mainstream. First, there was a glorification of Rome, which was considered to be a good model for empire building. The teenage children of the elite in countries like England, France, and Germany would learn Greek and Latin, and they would do tours of Italy to study ruins and statues. Second, wealthy European scholars who called themselves “Orientalists” would travel to conquered (or soon to be conquered) territories along the Silk Road to study their cultures, languages, and religious traditions.
What emerged from these two strands of fascination with the ancient world was a revival of Gnosticism, which evolved into a mainstream movement in the nineteenth century in the form of Spiritualism. Spiritualism was never formally codified as a religion, but it’s basically all that Arthur Conan Doyle nonsense where people believed that you could see fairies and talk to ghosts and so on.
Spiritualism was popular throughout Europe, and it also became one of the big new religious movements of the “Third Great Awakening” in the United States. Unlike more congregation-based movements such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Church of Latter Day Saints, Spiritualist beliefs never really coalesced into a formal religious doctrine. Still, one of the more tangible manifestations of Spiritualism was the Theosophical Society, which was founded in 1875 by a Russian expat named Helena Blavatsky.
Madame Blavatsky was rich, and her two great loves were sexy séances and “Oriental” culture. She wrote two books based on her ideas, Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine. I’ve only read excerpts from these books, which was more than enough. They’re very silly. To summarize, the Theosophy movement based on Blavatsky’s writings was strongly inspired by Gnosticism. Its core tenets are that:
1. There is an Absolute Truth underlying the material universe.
2. All contemporary religions are therefore offshoots of an ur-religion.
3. Ascended Masters like Moses, Jesus, and Mohamed had access to Absolute Truth,
4. and they continue to dwell in a separate realm from which they can communicate
5. with members of a secret society of heroes called the Great White Brotherhood.
This all feels very YA urban fantasy, and it’s worth noting that Madame Blavatsky had an imaginary South Asian boyfriend named “Koot Hoomi” who served as one of her spirit guides at the séances she hosted. Apparently this was a little too cringe, so Koot Hoomi has since been renamed as “Rishi Kuthumi.” Which is somehow supposed to be less cringe? Anyway.
According to ST Joshi, HP Lovecraft thought all of this was ridiculous, but he was inspired by Blavatsky’s idea that all religions are attempts to communicate a truth too vast and terrible for human comprehension. For Lovecraft, that “truth” was that space is filled with giant tentacle monsters. Through correspondence with his close male friends, Lovecraft gradually worked out an entire mythos surrounding manly men being harassed by large tentacles. In a totally no homo way of course lmao.
Putting tentacles aside for the moment, the idea of the Necronomicon is borrowed from gnostic beliefs. The Necronomicon, which supposedly originated in the Rub' al Khali (the desert occupying the south of the Arabian Peninsula), essentially functions as a gnostic historiola.
Historiolas don’t exist in contemporary religions, but they were fairly common in ancient religions. The idea was that the act of reading a text functioned as a magic ritual. If you read a historiola out loud, or if you copied it out by hand, this would grant you power and allow you to invoke the magic contained within that specific combination of words. This is different from a regular magic spell in that a historiola is an entire book (or scroll, or set of tablets, etc).
Although the exact nature of the Necronomicon was left purposefully vague, the consensus seems to be that the act of reading the book allows the lector to erase the division between dimensions, thus potentially inviting tentacle monsters into our world.
To be super nerdy for a second, Lovecraft’s giant tentacle monsters are separate from “the Old Ones,” a term that refers to several species of sentient beings who lived on the earth in distant prehistoric times. Cthulhu is one of the Old Ones, and he’s scary precisely because he wants to summon deep space horrorterrors such as Yog-Sothoth, who is the tutelary deity of Cthulhu’s people.
Lovecraft protagonists are constantly being threatened by large tentacled creatures called shoggoths, which are generic beasts of burden created and bred by a fungal race of Old Ones. Since shoggoths have high rates of cellular regeneration and are essentially deathless if left to their own devices, a few of them are still lurking about underground in places like Antarctica and… Boston I guess.
Lovecraft’s stories don’t make a lot of sense, but what I think is supposed to be going on is that Cthulhu is sleeping in an underwater city; and, by communicating through dreams, he’s trying to influence the current race of people on the earth – humans – to recreate the ritual that will summon the Elder Gods. The Necronomicon is a product of Cthulhu’s dream transmissions. Because the book has been destroyed and recreated and translated so many times, the historiola doesn’t work properly, and the ritual of reading it is imperfect. Instead of opening a door between worlds, you just get shitty shoggoths.
So in the story I’m writing, the grad student studying Gnosticism at Miskatonic University is reading a printout of a crusty PDF of a shitty lo-fi scan of a dubious copy of the original Arabic Necronomicon, the Kitab al-Azif. What little magic still exists in this text is invoked by the grad student’s handwritten translation-in-progress. Unfortunately for him, the ritual is extremely corrupted, and he accidentally starts to turn himself into a shoggoth.
Basically, the grad student grows tentacles. Are they sexy tentacles? I like to think so, but that depends on whether the story is accepted for tradpub.
Anyway, as a side note, I actually used to live a few doors down from the United Lodge of Theosophists. The building currently houses a public library, and they host free weekly public lectures on world religions. You can walk right in and pick up all sorts of pamphlets if you like, and the interior architecture is very cool. If you’re interested, you can read about the building’s history and see some photos on the Hidden City Philadelphia website here: https://hiddencityphila.org/2012/03/blavatskys-castle-of-the-occult-on-rittenhouse-square/
From this article, I learned that Madame Blavatsky actually lived in West Philadelphia and operated séances out of her house on Samson Street. I thought I recognized the address, and sure enough, her residence was preserved as the White Dog Café. The restaurant was apparently named for Blavatsky’s dog, who would relieve people’s joint pain by licking their hands and knees.
The White Dog Café raised their prices during the pandemic, which sucks, but I’d still recommend at least getting lunch there if you’re ever in Philadelphia. The food is worth the money, and the interior of that townhouse is amazing. My favorite thing on the menu is their homemade vanilla ice cream complimented with freshly baked dogbone-shaped sugar cookies. Oh and I guess the building is haunted maybe.
ETA: I went to the White Dog Café for lunch the day after I wrote this. It's good, but maybe not worth the money. They also redecorated, and the interior is now a generic sort of New American Modern. Me and my friend spent like $75 on two sandwiches and some ice cream, and we did not see a single ghost.
no subject
Date: 2023-04-27 04:35 pm (UTC)Alas for no ghosts :(