I know some Gnostics who are pretty
ecumenical in their inclusion of various divinities in their work
because they don't believe in them as actual personal divine beings.
I know some Gnostics that don't believe
that Gnosticism has a Christian component, and that particular symbol
set doesn't need to be part of their Gnosticism, or if it is, they
don't need to acknowledge it as more than a symbol even if they
believe in other gods.
That can work for them, and that's
great.
But I definitely confuse my friends,
because I think most of them know I'm a hardline polytheist. On the
flip side, I'm pretty borderline Catholic. I had an OTO friend admit that he initially thought I was
a secret Catholic priest sent to spy on the OTO. When I celebrated
the marriage of my best friend and his wife several Roman Catholics
came up to tell me how Catholic my celebration of the ceremony felt.
I have a major hard on for the Jesuits, and kind of style some of my
thinking after theirs, and I frequently read works by Jesuits to
develop myself as a priest. I've had Catholics tell me that I'm so
Catholic they don't understand why I don't just convert.
My friends and I occasionally take
pause when my answers to things that come up sound more like a
Catholic priest than an EGC priest or a sorcerer.
Which kind of gets to why I don't
convert. I hold Gnostic views on religion. I practice magic. I
believe in other gods. I'm ok with people having whatever flexibility
or direction they need in their sexuality. So I probably wouldn't
make it as a standard Catholic. Because I'm not one.
I had a dream once where I had to
perform an exorcism, and the spirits taunted me that I couldn't do it
because I wasn't a Christian and was trying to exorcise them as a
Catholic priest would.
When I woke up, it definitely left me
with questions about what I believe and how it all fits.
Similarly when I ask my Johannite
friends about their church and coming to check out what they've got
going on, I ask myself about how their priests seem to navigate being
part of a Christian Gnostic tradition and then also working with
Pagan Gods and non-Christian sorcery, and I ask myself about how I
think and feel about such creative theology.
Because I'm cool with the idea of
running around like a Valentinian and bringing the Living Gnosis to
mainstream Christians and Gnostics alike, but at the same time I'm a
Thelemite, I organize some of the best Dionysian spiritual revelries,
and I like to hang in the woods with Druids and chat up Odin from
time to time.
At the same time, I do believe in
Christ as a divine being equally with the other gods. Recognizing and
accepting that was pretty easy and kind of nullified the need to
question stuff. But I've run into a lot of people who do question how
that works, and whether or not it's something that works for them, or
if it was going to how it would work.
Recently there was some joking online
about being married to Christ, but it being difficult for people who
want to commit to other gods too. Which is where the title of this
post came from.
The thing is, from a Gnostic
perspective it's really not that weird. The Living Jesus of
Gnosticism isn't the singular son of a singular divine being, sharing
the same divine presence in three persons. Christ is part of an
overall collective of divine beings. These divine beings all stem
from a non-personal divinity not far off from what we see as the One
and the Good in Neoplatonism. Depending upon the nature of the divine
being they might exist within different levels of emanation from the
source, they might have different natures or functions or powers as
well. Christ is just one of many whose purpose was to come deliver a
message to enlighten the world, but he's not necessarily the
principle deity or the one that people will necessarily need to work
with most of the time. In fact, the whole message of the Gnostic
Christ is that his message makes you the same as him. Once you're the
same as him, the real work involves the other gods and spirits with
whom you would interact as you enlighten yourself and enlighten the
world.
From my perspective, as I thought about
it more, my polyamorous relationship with Jesus is one in which he's
not my primary. I dig the places he hangs out, and I like some of his
lifestyle choices, but not all of them. There are other gods with
whom I am closer, and with whom I've spent more time and built deeper
connections. Still, as a kid I had a really deep relationship with
Christ, even as I began learning magic. As a teenager when I got
deeper into magic and paganism I stayed further from Christianity
until I was an adult and realized that religious experience can draw
from a lot of sources to inform each other and those sources don't
have to disrupt each other.
I've always believed that vocation is a
calling towards a universal service to the spirituality of mankind.
I've always believed that religion isn't necessarily about a
particular religious expression so much as the overarching divine
harmony expressed through the prism of man's thoughts and actions.
With that being the case, human religion is in my mind a swirling
interlocking series of expressions that can speak to us in different
ways for different purposes, each answering different questions of
life and experience.
So yeah, Jesus and I can be bros swept
up in a tenuous homosocial love affair, which bolsters my ability to
call upon the divine names associated with him as I engage in Jewish
and Christian sorcery, or to find meaning in the mystical
explorations of God through NeoPlatonic, Gnostic, and Hermetic models
which influenced the development of Christian thought. At the same
time, I can help hold off the twilight of the Gods through living as
a good traveling partner and following the virtues and behaviors the
Gods want for man, and enjoy community within the traditional folk
cultures which call to me. I can be equally swept up with the gods of
my ancestors, or whatever other gods I encounter and groove with.
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