The Gospel of Mary is probably the most famous non-Nag Hammadi library text out there. Despite it not being complete, an interesting teaching arises from this text. I am going to solely focus on the toll houses presented in this story. If you did not catch my previous blog entry about toll houses (click HERE), …
Tag Archives: gnosticism
Toll Houses in the (Coptic) Apocalypse of Paul
Over the past few months, I’ve been gathering sources on Toll Houses. This is an Orthodox concept regarding souls after they leave the body and their ascent into heaven. Now let it be said, this is not a mainstream belief in modern Orthodoxy. There is much debate in it, but the concept does exist, and …
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The Monad Within You
Back in October of this year, I put out a book of original work on LULU titled “The Sunesis Cosmogram”, which features three essays I wrote regarding the Circumpunct Symbol of Freemasonry as well as the three virtues (Hope, Faith and Charity). The main essay of the book is my re-working of the Circumpunct and …
Irenaeus on Simon of Samaria
I haven’t done a Simon Magus post in awhile (check out my other posts via the “tag” at the bottom of this post), so I figured this would be a good one to share. I was browsing through the MASSIVE Ante-Nicene Fathers collection and came upon the Against Heresies section that is attributed to Irenaeus. …
Sayings of John the Baptist from the Ginza Rabba
Sorry for the lack of updates in the past two months. Real life gets in the way sometimes. With this post, I am bringing forth a collection of sayings from John the Baptist (Yuhana) from the Mandaean holy book, the “Ginza Rabba”. These are taken from the English translated version by Prof. Dr. Qais Mughashghash …
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Mary Magdalene in the Psalms of the Lord Heracleides
Earlier this year I presented a Manichaean Psalm that mentioned Salome. Now I will present you a Psalm involving Mary Magdalene. This Psalm comes from the collection titled “Psalms of the Lord Hercleides”. These are dated back to around the mid 4th century. I am pulling this translation from the 1938 book “A Manichaean Psalm …
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Martha in the Pistis Sophia
Martha, sister of Mary (of Bethany) and Lazarus, is a well known secondary character in the Gospels of Luke and John. But has she appeared elsewhere in non-canonical sources? There are some Latin medieval tales (particular of the “Golden Legend” lore) but there are much earlier stories, those being from the Gnostic tradition! I have …
Mary Magdalene: Baptism of water and fire
In a post awhile back I mentioned some newly translated fragments from the oxyrhynchus dig that had been released to the public. These are fragments 5575, 5576 and 5577. 5575 is a Jesus sayings fragment that has similarities to Matthew, Luke and Thomas. 5576 is a gnostic style fragment. 5577 is a dialogue between Mary …
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Talking baby Jesus
The past month or so I have been doing a deep dive into the Quran and really enjoy comparing the aspects of various figures in there with their Christian / Jewish counterparts, particularly that of Jesus / Isa. I had a previous blog post (link HERE) that mentions the crucifixion body swap that appears in …
Comparing translations of Thomas sayings
I mentioned in previous blog posts on how important it is to check out various translations of texts. Sometimes it is not possible but when there are multiple translations you should definitely do so! Unless you can read the source manuscript (Coptic, Greek, etc…), you are forced to go by modern (or somewhat modern, i.e. …
Culmination of Wisdom 