Gnostic Mystery Jesus
Reimagine the mythology of Jesus, with the Gnostic gospels and Mystery religions as our guide. In this version of the Jesus myth, Mary Magdalene and the women were not simply witnesses to the resurrection as described in orthodox traditions, they were completely responsible for it.
By the Mysterious powers of the feminine Divine, the Three Marys ushered Jesus into the afterlife and then brought him back, transforming him from a man into a god.
Swoon Theory is the idea that Jesus survived the crucifixion. A straight and scholarly reading of the Canonical gospels reveals a simple narrative; Jesus was sedated with a strong potion while on the cross allowing him to appear dead, was taken down quickly, and his wounds were treated with medicines and bandaged, while he lay unconscious for a day and a half before being revived.
The mystery potion, identified as wine vinegar in the scriptures, was likely a potent tincture made from cannabis, which has been scientifically identified to have the pharmacological properties needed to aid Jesus and make him appear dead; catalepsy, hypothermia, hypomotility, and analgesia.
An Islamic wiseman said, “if you saw a man crucified and a few days later you saw him alive, doesn’t it make sense that he simply never died?”
Early Christians
For 300 years after Jesus walked the Earth his followers were diverse and held wildly different views of his teachings.
Most of Jesus’ original disciples remained in Jerusalem as pious Jews under the leadership of Jesus’ brother James the Just. They were awaiting an apocalypse that came for them in the year 70 when the Romans killed them all, destroyed their temple and burned down the city.
Orthodox Christianity that we know today was founded by the Apostles Peter and Paul. The Orthodox track their institutional authority back to Peter, the first Bishop of Rome. Paul is credited with inventing many core principles of Christianity, such as the idea that Jesus died for our sins. Yet Paul never met Jesus, did not know him, and did not get along well with the Jewish disciples.
Gnostics
Gnostic Christians were mystics who said that Jesus taught the path to God was through knowledge of self. A spark of the Divine exists within us all and through introspection we can unite with God. Ignorance is the source of all suffering and wisdom is the source of salvation, wisdom that derives from the Divine Mother.
The Gnostics embraced the feminine Divine and rejected the Orthodox hierarchy of male-only bishops, priests, and deacons, and their institutional authority. The Gnostics had egalitarian communities with no permanent priests and welcomed female leadership.
For the Gnostics, Mary Magdalene was the Apostle to the Apostles and the keeper of Jesus' closest secrets. She accompanied Jesus at the cross and was the first witness to the resurrection. In the Gnostic texts, Mary Magdalene is revered, but Apostle Peter saw her as a rival and was jealous of her intimacy with Jesus. Peter and other male Christians were offended by female leadership.
Mystery Jesus
Mystery religions were ancient women-led traditions rooted in nature and the cycles of life that were among the most important pagan beliefs. The Divine Mother is at the heart of the Mystery religions. In their myths of a dying and rising god, a hero is taken to the underworld and is brought back to life and majesty by the powers of a great goddess such as Isis of Egypt, Demeter of Greece, or Ishtar of Babylon, and many others.
Human morality was deeply important in the Mysteries as initiates were taught secret knowledge that prepared them for the afterlife. Only those with spiritual maturity could expect to be invited into the inner sanctums of their teachings.
Plant drugs such as cannabis and psychedelics were mixed as mystery potions like the kykeon that gave initiates a chance to experience death before death. Mastery of plant drugs and mystery potions was women’s work and would be branded witchcraft by the church in later centuries.
In the Bible, Mary Magdalene is said to have had seven demons driven from her by Jesus (Luke 8:2), and this could be a symbolic reference to the Mysteries which used a seven gates motif. The Mystery religions were very common and popular in the pagan world of the time and as women-led traditions would have been culturally accessible to the women around Jesus.
It has long been believed that Jesus survived his crucifixion and execution. Did the Three Marys pull off the greatest magic trick of all time?
Nag Hammadi Library
The Nag Hammadi Library is an incredible collection of Gnostic Christian writings that were hidden in a jar and buried, presumably around the year 367 when the Archbishop of Alexandria ordered all non-approved texts to be burned. The Nag Hammadi library was discovered in 1945 and only made available to the public in 1978. There are 52 distinct treatises containing Gnostic gospels, mythology, and poetry. They are Coptic translations of older Greek texts and some of the Gnostic gospels date back to the 1st century and are as old as the canonical gospels.
The Gnostic gospels present Jesus in an entirely different light than we are typically taught.
Here we present some of the Gnostic gospels in their entirety. They are true sources of wisdom for ancient and modern minds alike.
Source: Gnostic Society Library
A collection of Jesus' secret sayings.
A collection of mystical Gnostic discourses presented by Jesus to the Apostles.
This text is fragmented but presents a compelling scene of Mary Magdalene teaching all the Apostles and Peter objecting to her leadership.
A remarkable poem written in the voice of the divine Mother herself.
Gnostic Mythology
In Gnostic myths, Yahweh the Jewish monotheistic God, was the son of the true Heavenly Father. Yahweh was the demiurge, the flawed creator of this flawed reality, the Father was the monad, the source of all divine power and metaphysics. Jesus taught that a spark of the divine was in all of us, and the path to the monad was through self-knowledge. Gnostic teachings are close to Greek philosophy and Eastern religions.
The chosen son rules as Lord and there can only be one Lord. A new Lord must displace the previous, Yahweh defeated Baal who had previously destroyed his rivals, and the motif repeats in countless mythologies such as Zeus castrating his father Cronos, or Marduk defeating Kingu to become king of the gods.
Gnostics v. Orthodox
In the 4th century, Orthodox Christianity became the state religion of Rome. Gnostic texts and anything that challenged Orthodox views were deemed heretical and banned as blasphemy. Pagan philosophy, Mystery religions, and non-Orthodox Christianity were all banned and forced to shut down.
Gnostic teachings directly contradict Orthodox teachings. Gnostics taught that ignorance is the source of our suffering and that self-knowledge, wisdom, gnosis, is the path to salvation. The Orthodox Church teaches that sin separates us from God and only Jesus can rescue us from our sins.
Orthodox taught that one must seek God through the institution of the church and that only the approved clerics could mediate the relationship with the divine. The Gnostics taught a spark of the divine is within us all, that our souls are wrapped with the divine and we find it within ourselves.
Rather than a savior from sin and torment in hell, Gnostic Jesus was a teacher of secret, mystical knowledge that even the priests and bishops did not have access to. These ideas are perfectly normal to modern-day Christian mystics who believe in Christ Consciousness but represent a severe challenge to the orthodox church dedicated to its institutional authority of bishops, priests, and deacons.
The Orthodox church was open to all people who were baptized and simply pledged the Apostolic Creed that proclaims the physical resurrection of Jesus in the flesh. Gnostics were not concerned with the resurrection, and they were a select group of elects dedicated to a life of renunciation and prayer and as such were vulnerable to being eliminated.