The Lost Myth of Gnostic Mystery Jesus
Read this short story and imagine an entirely different Christianity rooted in mysticism and wisdom.
Jesus and the Three Marys faked his death in a political stunt and through the power of the Feminine Divine, the women elevated Jesus from a man into a god. But the male Apostles did not approve of revelations from women and their stories were intentionally forgotten.
Lost Gospels
300 years after Jesus walked the Earth, Orthodox Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, and all other spiritual traditions were banned. Temples were shuttered, books were burned, and priests were murdered, all rival religions were branded as blasphemy and exterminated with self-righteous violence.
In 367 near Alexandria, Egypt, a Gnostic Christian monk hid a collection of sacred texts in a clay jar buried in a cave. Some of the Gnostic gospels record the lessons Jesus taught to his earliest followers and they reveal a mystical Jesus wildly different than the Orthodox Jesus we know today.
The Gnostics believed that one's personal revelation of God was more authentic than the teachings of any bishops or priests. The Orthodox branded them as heretical because they challenged their institutional authority. Precious few Gnostic texts escaped the purge.
Gnostic Mystery Jesus teaches us the divine exists within us all, and the path to the Heavenly Father is through self-knowledge, or gnosis. Ignorance is the source of our suffering and wisdom our salvation. Jesus taught us to embrace the wisdom of the Divine Mother alongside the Heavenly Father and the Gnostic Trinity is Father, Son, and Sophia.
Mary Magdalene is the Gnostic Apostle to the Apostles and the keeper of Jesus' closest secrets, like how he died and rose again. The Mysteries were ancient women-led traditions that taught initiates the secrets of immortality and the cycle of life.
Hear the mystical teachings of Gnostic Jesus and learn the secrets of his Mysterious resurrection.
KNOWLEDGE OF SELF
Should you who possess everything not know yourself?
If you do not know yourself,
you will not enjoy what you own.
But know yourself
and what you have enjoy.
- Gospel of Philip
IGNORANCE
Ignorance is the mother of all evil.
Ignorance will eventuate in death,
because those who come from ignorance
neither were nor are nor will be.
But those who are in the truth will be perfect
when all the truth is revealed.
For truth is like ignorance: while hidden it rests in itself,
but when revealed and recognized,
it is praised in that it is stronger than ignorance and error.
It gives freedom. The word said,
“If you know the truth, the truth will make you free.”
Ignorance is a slave,
knowledge is freedom.
If we know the truth,
we shall find the fruits of the truth within us.
If we join it, it will fulfill us.
- Gospel of Philip
Jesus and the Feminine Divine
Jesus had close friendships with many women which was countercultural for his era. Jesus knew that women brought wisdom and they formed his inner circle. Peter and some of the male Apostles did not approve and wanted the women gone.
ASK YOUR MOTHER
A student once asked the lord for something
from the world, and he said,
“Ask your mother,
and she will give you something from another realm.”
- Gospel of Philip
THREE MARYS
Three Marys walked with the lord:
His mother, his sister, and Mary of Magdala, his companion.
His sister and mother and companion were Mary.
- Gospel of Philip
WISDOM, MOTHER OF THE ANGELS
Wisdom, who is called “barren,” is mother of the angels.
The companion is Mary of Magdala.
Jesus loved her more than his disciples.
He kissed her often on her face, more than all his disciples,
and they said, “Why do you love her more than us?”
The savior answered, saying to them,
“Why do I not love you like her? If a blind man
and one who sees are together in darkness, they are the same.
When light comes, the one who sees will see light.
The blind man stays in darkness.”
- Gospel of Philip
Jesus said,
Whoever knows the father and the mother
will be called the child of a whore.
- Gospel of Thomas: 105
Simon Peter said to them,
Mary should leave us.
Females are not worthy of the life.
Jesus said,
Look, I shall guide her to make her male,
so she too may become a living spirit resembling you males.
For every female who makes herself male
will enter the kingdom of heaven.
- Gospel of Thomas: 114
Jesus said,
I disclose my mysteries
to those who are worthy of my mysteries.
Do not let your left hand know
what your right hand is doing.
- Gospel of Thomas: 62
Jesus Taught Wisdom
His disciples asked him and said to him,
Do you want us to fast?
How should we pray?
Should we give to charity?
What diet should we observe?
Jesus said,
Do not lie and do not do what you hate.
All things are disclosed before heaven.
There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed,
nothing covered that will remain undisclosed.
- Gospel of Thomas: 6
The disciples said to Jesus,
Tell us how our end will be.
Jesus said,
“Have you discovered the beginning and now are seeking the end?
Where the beginning is, the end will be.
Blessings on you who stand at the beginning.
You will know the end and not taste death.”
- Gospel of Thomas: 18
FAITH AND LOVE
Faith receives, love gives.
No one receives without faith.
No one gives without love.
To receive, believe; to love, give.
If you give without love,
no one derives a thing from what is given.
- Gospel of Philip
Jesus said,
Seek and you will find.
In the past I did not tell you the things about which you asked me.
Now I am willing to tell you, but you do not seek them.
- Gospel of Thomas: 92
MYSTERY
It is good to speak of mystery,
especially because the father of all
joined with the virgin who came down,
and on that day a fire shone over him.
He came to the bridal chamber.
So on that very day his body came into being.
And on that day he left the chamber with the splendor
of what passed between the bride and bridegroom.
Through this force Jesus did everything.
It is good for each of his disciples
to go into the chamber and rest.
- Gospel of Philip
Creation
In Gnostic mythology, Yahweh is the demiurge, the flawed creator of this flawed reality. Yahweh is but one of many sons of El Elyon, God most high, the monad, the true Heavenly Father.
CREATION
The world came into being through error.
The agent who made it
wanted it to be imperishable and immortal.
He failed.
He came up with less than his desire.
The world was never incorruptible,
nor was its maker.
Things are not imperishable,
but children are.
Nothing can endure that is not first a child.
Whoever cannot receive
surely will be unable to give.
- Gospel of Philip
The Perfect Savior said to them: “I want you to know that Sophia, the Mother of the Universe and the consort, desired by herself to bring these to existence without her male (consort). But by the will of the Father of the Universe, that his unimaginable goodness might be revealed, he created that curtain between the immortals and those that came afterward, that the consequence might follow.
- The Sophia of Jesus
Psychedelic Eucharist
Psychedelic plant drugs were used in the Mysteries to help the initiate find immortality by tasting death before death through the dissolution of the ego. The Divine Mother speaks to us through the plants and teaches us to embrace the cycle of life.
Jesus said,
Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me.
I myself shall become that person,
and the hidden things will be revealed to that one.
- Gospel of Thomas: 108
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
- John 6:51
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.
- John 6:54-56
And Jesus said, Whoever discovers
what these sayings mean will not taste death.
- Gospel of Thomas: 1
Jesus Embraced Death
Jesus was a political and religious revolutionary (among many things). He challenged the Sanhedrin, the Jewish authorities at the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus said the Sanhedrin were corrupt and he planned to overthrow them. Jesus intentionally made them angry by kicking the money changers out of the temple and mocking their leadership.
Jesus knew his actions would get him arrested and executed, but he did not flee or attempt to escape. Jesus predicted his death many times and said that he would rise again; because he had a plan to survive. Jesus did not inform his 12 male disciples who fled in horror when their teacher was handed over to the Roman authorities to be crucified.
Jesus was teaching his disciples.
He said to them, "The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise.”
But they did not understand what he meant and were afraid to ask him about it.
- Mark 9:31-32
Jesus said,
“The Pharisees and the scholars have taken the keys of knowledge and have hidden them.
They have not entered, nor have they allowed those who want to enter to go inside.
You should be shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves.”
- Gospel of Thomas: 39
Jesus said,
Shame on the Pharisees.
They are like a dog sleeping in the cattle manger.
It does not eat or let the cattle eat
- Gospel of Thomas: 102
Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and again, saying, "Hail, king of the Jews!" And they slapped him in the face.
- John 19:1-3
Mysteries
The critical moment has arrived. Jesus has been arrested. He is beaten, flogged, and stabbed by the Romans, his wounds are serious but not fatal. On Golgotha, Jesus is nailed through his wrists and feet onto a heavy wooden cross and lifted up to suffer a slow, agonizing death.
The Three Marys were close at hand. When he was ready, Mary Magdalene soaked a sponge in her mystery potion, a sacred tincture that would make Jesus swoon and appear dead. The strong drink was made from cannabis, the sacred plant of the Divine Mother, Eve's tree of knowledge and Moses' burning bush.
Jesus swallowed the bitter drink and promptly collapsed.
Like their Israelite mothers centuries earlier who ritually wept for Tammuz so that Astarte the Queen of Heaven would restore him to life and majesty, the Three Marys ushered Jesus into the underworld and then brought him back.
By the powers of the Feminine Divine, the Three Marys elevated Jesus from a man into a god.
Jesus' body was taken down from the cross after a few short hours when crucifixions normally took days. The Three Marys had help from Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus who had an empty tomb nearby and plenty of medicines and bandages. They treated Jesus' wounds and laid him to rest undisturbed under heavy sedation for a day and a half, a perfect prescription for nursing a badly wounded man.
At dawn after the sabbath, the Three Marys went back to the tomb with more medicines and revived Jesus. The women ran and told the men that Jesus is alive, all the while keeping the secret behind the miracle.
“By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”
- Matthew 26:12-13
Many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs.
- Matthew 27:55
Standing by the cross of Jesus were His mother, His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.
- John 19:25
Later, knowing that everything had now been finished...
Jesus said, "I am thirsty."
A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips.
When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished."
With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
- John 19:28-30
When [the centurions] came to Jesus, they did not break His legs since they saw that He was already dead.
- John 19:33
Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Sanhedrin who was himself looking forward to the kingdom of God, came and boldly went into Pilate and asked for Jesus' body. Pilate was surprised that He was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him whether He had already died. When he found out from the centurion, he gave the corpse to Joseph.
- Mark 15:43-45
Nicodemus (who had previously come to Him at night) also came, bringing a mixture of about 75 pounds of myrrh and aloes. Then they took Jesus' body and wrapped it in linen cloths with the aromatic spices, according to the burial custom of the Jews.
- John 19:39-40
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body.
- Mark 16:1
After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.
- Matthew 28:1
When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons.
- Mark 16:9
Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark. She saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb… she turned around and saw Jesus standing there.
- John 20:1; 14
It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles.
- Luke 24:10
Dying and Rising
Jesus was seen alive after his public execution by a number of people. The first generation of witnesses convinced many people that they had witnessed a miracle, an unexplained good fortune, Jesus conquered death just like he said he would!
[Jesus] was buried, He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve. After that, He appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles.
- 1 Corinthians 15:4-7
After his suffering, [Jesus] presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.
- Acts 1:3
Jesus rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen.
- Matthew 16:14
JESUS TRICKED EVERYONE
Jesus tricked everyone.
He did not appear as he was
but in a way not to be seen.
Yet he appeared to all of them.
To the great he appeared as great,
to the small as small.
To angels he appeared as an angel,
and to humans as a human.
And he hid his word from everyone.
Some looked at him and thought they saw themselves.
When before his disciples he appeared gloriously
on the mountain, he was not small.
No, he became great, and he made his disciples grow
so they would know his immensity.
- Gospel of Philip
First Christians
Jesus did not live for long and after he passed on, and factions arose within the community immediately. Mary Magdalene was seen to be the Apostle to the Apostles and she was sought out for her visions and insight, but the Apostle Peter resented her leadership.
In time, the Orthodox church removed women from leadership and consolidated their male-only authority that rejects all notions of a Divine Mother or personal revelation of God. For the Orthodox church, its institutional authority would always be the primary concern over truth and salvation. The Gnostics were lost to history but many of their ideas live on today.
Peter said to Mary, “Sister we know that the Savior loved you more than the rest of woman. Tell us the words of the Savior which you remember which you know, but we do not, nor have we heard them.”
Mary answered and said, “What is hidden from you I will proclaim to you.”
And she began to speak to them these words: “I, she said, I saw the Lord in a vision and I said to Him, Lord I saw you today in a vision.”
He answered and said to me, “Blessed are you that you did not waver at the sight of Me. For where the mind is there is the treasure.”
I said to Him, “Lord, how does he who sees the vision see it, through the soul or through the spirit?”
The Savior answered and said, “He does not see through the soul nor through the spirit, but the mind that is between the two that is what sees the vision…”
- Gospel of Mary 5:5-11
When Mary had said this, she fell silent, since it was to this point that the Savior had spoken with her.
But Andrew answered and said to the brethren, “Say what you wish to say about what she has said. I at least do not believe that the Savior said this. For certainly these teachings are strange ideas.”
Peter answered and spoke concerning these same things. He questioned them about the Savior: “Did He really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did He prefer her to us?”
Then Mary wept and said to Peter, “My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I have thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Savior?”
Levi answered and said to Peter, “Peter you have always been hot tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well. That is why He loved her more than us. Rather let us be ashamed and put on the perfect Man, and separate as He commanded us and preach the gospel, not laying down any other rule or other law beyond what the Savior said.”
And when they heard this they began to go forth to proclaim and to preach.
- Gospel of Mary 9:1-10
Sacred Art by Juan Hernandez
All the quotes used here are taken from the Gnostic Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and the Sophia of Jesus, translations found at the Gnostic Society Library. Bible quotes from the New International Version of the Bible.