The Gnostic deposit of the Priory of Sion, although it is obviously of far more ancient origin, also passes through the doctrinal Cathar baggage, which survived the persecution of 1208, perpetrated with unscrupulous ferocity through the crusade of Pope Innocent III, which culminated with the ruinous and bloody fall of Montsegur, the historic and indomitable stronghold of the Cathars.
Since that time, although much of the traditional knowledge and teachings of the Gnostic masters have been saved, it seems that some fundamental interpretative keys have been lost in certain branches of transmission, which to date is rare to find among the deposits of current initiatory orders with Gnostic orientation. In this chapter, we will carefully review the nature of this interpretative key, essential to activating the real Gnostic message in its integrity, since, without the final decoding key, the teaching itself is necessarily things incomplete, if not at times necessarily diverted from what is originally in its essence.
The Gnosis, places its main foundation in the achievement of a knowledge which is essentially salvific for the individual, in consideration of the assumption that it completes it in its essence, guaranteeing so the "salvation", which is the safeguard from Failure of the realization of one's inner and spiritual potential; Salvation therefore not only from failure in our inner self-realization, but also from "hell", not understood in the common meaning of the term, but rather as that state of affliction that arises from the psychological dependence that makes man dominated by the material World and of its pleasures, bringing it in a condition where the pleasure and the taste of things is no longer choice, but psychological necessity; This is the type of condition that "extinguishes" the spirit and the repercussions in everyday life can be of more or less sensitive and relevant importance, but still relevant to the allegorical concept of "hell" and it is very coherent to assume that even after The earthly life, a certain and determined condition does not come to be erased with a stroke of sponge, but can continue to condition the will and consciousness of the person even after the passage.
"Know thyself and know the universe and the Gods."
Socrates
The beginning of this sentence ("Know thyself"), engraved originally on the pediment of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, is certainly fundamental to know the real basis on which are laid the true foundations of Gnostic thought, which, as we have seen, sees The individual as the only and possible creator of salvation through enlightenment and communion with God, without the need for intermediaries.
This knowledge of oneself does not refer to the most superficial inner features of man, such as personality, individual psychology and various subjective tendencies, which are but the "reflection" of its true essence, structured as a program that is delineate taking into account also the deepest aspects, but much more often ignoring and pursuing to be configured merely on the basis of the most superficial connotations. Instead, the gnosis is precisely that achievement and that awareness of its true essence and the consequent coordination and expansion of all the inner and deep com-, which, once brought to light, can further flourish and develop, in symbiosis with one another, giving life to the authentic and pure primordial being, Osiris, finally washed away from all the pollution and interference from the outside world in regards to the conscious mind.
Several Gnostic congregations, based on the literal interpretation of an allegory, theorize that the world was created not by God, but by eons and that the latter were-ro of the real entities, distinct and self-conscious, protagonists of the creation and emanated from the pleroma, which would be nothing but the scope and that place/non-timeless and undefined place where the totality of the powers and the essence of God would lie.
The attentive esotericist could, wanting, already notice a fundamental inconsistency in this allegory, since nothing in creation can be outside of God and his dominion and the (apparent) dry discrepancies in the elements of traditional knowledge, if authentic, they are never random, but they are Eons, therefore, are represented as emanations of the Father God and Creator, alias the Monad or the perfect aeon that would have in it another aeon known as Ennoia ("thought"). Always according to the allegory represented by this myth, this being perfect, later, would conceive the second and the third Aeon, that is the male Caen ("power") and the female Akhana ("Truth", "Love"), and it is from these eons that then would be born another Aeon Called Sophia who, through desire, would have in turn enacted the Demiurge, in the Cathar gnostic texts called Rex Mundi, a being that should never have existed, because, being with the actions and consequently in the essence at the boundary between matter and Spirit, represented an absolute paradox. This creature, not belonging to the Pleroma, would have created the whole material world, but Sophia was able to instil in the matter its divine spark (Spirit-Pneuma), thus saving the fortunes of the universe and its inhabitants from the dominion of Demiurge, who would have given birth to the Archons, those figures that in the Gnostic cosmogony play the role of judges, administrators and controllers of the material finally washed away from all the pollution and interference from the outside world in regards to the conscious mind.
Several Gnostic congregations, based on the literal interpretation of an allegory, theorize that the world was created not by God, but by eons and that the latter were-ro of the real entities, distinct and self-conscious, protagonists of the creation and emanated from the pleroma, which would be nothing but the scope and that place/non-timeless and undefined place where the totality of the powers and the essence of God would lie.
The attentive esotericist could, wanting, already notice a fundamental inconsistency in this allegory, since nothing in creation can be outside of God and his dominion and the (apparent) dry discrepancies in the elements of traditional knowledge, if authentic, they are never random, but they are Eons, therefore, are represented as emanations of the Father God and Creator, alias the Monad or the perfect aeon that would have in it another aeon known as Ennoia ("thought"). Always according to the allegory represented by this myth, this being perfect, later, would conceive the second and the third Aeon, that is the male Caen ("power") and the female Akhana ("Truth", "Love"), and it is from these eons that then would be born another Aeon Called Sophia who, through desire, would have in turn enacted the Demiurge, in the Cathar gnostic texts called Rex Mundi, a being that should never have existed, because, being with the actions and consequently in the essence at the boundary between matter and Spirit, represented an absolute paradox. This creature, not belonging to the Pleroma, would have created the whole material world, but Sophia was able to instil in the matter its divine spark (Spirit-Pneuma), thus saving the fortunes of the universe and its inhabitants from the dominion of Demiurge, who would have given birth to the Archons, those figures that in the Gnostic cosmogony play the role of judges, administrators and controllers of the material world to a first analysis of the Gnostic myth, which is actually a very thin but absolutely coherent and linear allegory, if you analyse it exactly as such, the material world is separated from the Pleroma, and this division would originate from an initial sin, Because of which a force, straddling the Divine and material world, interposed between the physical world it spawned, where the man was imprisoned, and a Father God, superior and unknowable.
This force, straddling the material world and the unknowable and indefinable Father God, is the demiurge, who is supported in his dominion over the physical world by some emanations generated by himself, called the Archons, who, having consciousness of perfection of the Pleroma, they try to reproduce it through the conditioning of the lives of the men, but at the same time they are those who have been placed to guard the gap between this world and the sensible one above and then in intervening to the reunification and communion with Father Superior and unknowable creator. All this is but a profound and detailed allegory on human nature and on the Gnostic inner path that brings man back to his true essence and thus to reunification and communion with God; At the same time, even the mythical initial sin, is nothing but a symbol to represent in itself the interaction with the material world which, transcending from spiritual dominion, distracts and alienates from the latter.
Nothing is outside of God, otherwise God could not be such and could not have created everything that exists; Creation is part of God in an absolute sense, as tradition teaches us, in a more direct and less symbolic way, through other teachings. Hence that symbolic division is nothing other than the allegorical representation of the inner separation from man of the areas inherent in perception and experience in relation to the external and material world from the areas inherent in the perception and experience of the inner and spiritual world. and the Demiurge thus represents the expression of the inner and spiritual world that interacts with the outer and material world, but remains tended to be subjugated.
The Archons are therefore all those psychical mechanisms that act as an intermediary between the inner man and the material world, but at the same time, precisely giving him the rules to make him relate to the world in the most perfect and efficient way. , they inevitably and inexorably alienate it from the spiritual and inner world and therefore also from God the Creator and unknowable God.
This is why the true Gnosis, and the consequent Illumination which leads to communion and reunification with God, can only take place through inner work and not only in the daily life of living in relation to the external world, where we find " Arconti "to extinguish our spirituality, regulating our actions and our thoughts according to our role in the material world.
