Unverified Personal Gnosis

[Medusa]

Re: Unverified Personal Gnosis

I've tried to follow this thread. But abbreviations are driving me nuts.

But where was the source of knowledge for the Celtic or Germanic people in the first place that lead to their spiritual knowledge or mystical insight when there were no sacred books to reference?

I just want to address this in general. I mean at one point religion had to come from somewhere before it was in a book. The source source so to speak. I want to give an opinion that I know will make me sound snarky. But...
Could the answer be 'we made it up'? I mean sometimes you know..the simplest answer has a ring of truth. I guess that's my personal gnosis.

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Unverified Personal Gnosis

The letters drive me nuts as well, particularly since the "v" for verified, or the "c" for confirmed mean "subject to interpretation," which should be "sti."

My suggestion is this: if you want to confirm or verify spiritual concepts, don't look for references in old books, or dusty rusty artifacts. Test it. If it works for you, consider it verified and confirmed. If it doesn't, call it useless.

The use of all these letters that don't mean what they pretend to mean sure looks to this overly practical and benighted soul like the Orwellian linguistic obfuscation of people trying to make empty air sound deeply meaningful. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

That probably sounds snarky also, but, honest to Jebus guys, look at what you're saying from the outside...

[monsno_leedra]

Re: Unverified Personal Gnosis

The letters drive me nuts as well, particularly since the "v" for verified, or the "c" for confirmed mean "subject to interpretation," which should be "sti."

My suggestion is this: if you want to confirm or verify spiritual concepts, don't look for references in old books, or dusty rusty artifacts. Test it. If it works for you, consider it verified and confirmed. If it doesn't, call it useless.

The use of all these letters that don't mean what they pretend to mean sure looks to this overly practical and benighted soul like the Orwellian linguistic obfuscation of people trying to make empty air sound deeply meaningful. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

That probably sounds snarky also, but, honest to Jebus guys, look at what you're saying from the outside...

Just my own opinion but I think your not seeing how there used to be a big difference between the physical and the mystical. The physical was pretty structured and was the building blocks upon which we created our practices. The mystical was the internal and how we experienced and perceived the other world as it were.

I suppose equatable to the Wiccan idea of inner court and outer court teachings. Though in truth I think it more a hold over from the occultist and ceremonial practices that also influenced a lot of paganism.

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Unverified Personal Gnosis

Understand that this is also IMHO, and I am very OK with disagreement.

The distinction between physical and spiritual allows anybody to say any thing without the obligation to provide any evidence other than anecdotal accounts (from a holy book, from history, etc.).

This is a bad idea.

If the "spiritual" has some relationship to the "physical," then there will be evidence that can be examined.

If the "spiritual" has no relationship to the "physical," than I do not understand how it can be called "real," and, if it isn't real... What is it?

This may sound materialistic, but it isn't.

If Joe believes that worshipping Chuck by leaving out a bowl of milk will bring Joe good luck, Joe should leave out a bowl of milk for Chuck and see what happens to Joe's luck.

If Joe's luck improves, the gnosis is confirmed, even if there is no historical support for the technique, or even if it was never written in a book.

If it does not, no matter what historical precedent exists, or what is written in a book, the technique is neither confirmed or verified. It is useless, for Joe.

[thalassa]

Re: Unverified Personal Gnosis

But where was the source of knowledge for the Celtic or Germanic people in the first place that lead to their spiritual knowledge or mystical insight when there were no sacred books to reference?

The proto-Indo-Europeans. And MUS.

[thalassa]

Re: Unverified Personal Gnosis

I just want to address this in general. I mean at one point religion had to come from somewhere before it was in a book. The source source so to speak. I want to give an opinion that I know will make me sound snarky. But...
Could the answer be 'we made it up'? I mean sometimes you know..the simplest answer has a ring of truth. I guess that's my personal gnosis.

Yes...and no.

If we look at the development of religion as a function of time and human evolution (biological and cultural), its likely a natural phenomenon. Natural as in, the conditions are such that it arose naturally as a result of our specific neurology, how our culture works as a species, and our interactions with the environment. (While improbably possible) No one said, "Hey, lets pretend there's this imaginary dude in the sky, and lady in the Earth...and perpetuate this great fraud for all of history!!!"

We humans developed the ability to attribute agency to (or perhaps to sense the agency of) other objects and other life-forms--the sky, bears, trees, the mountains, the ocean, the forest, the river, the home, the field, the orchard, etc...whatever it was that was in our local ecosystem. This is why the earliest forms of organized religions have sky gods (among the proto-Indo-Europeans) and hearth goddesses, why (before Posideon) the deity of the Mediterranean was Thalassa, literally the Greek word for sea. And (though I like to blame Plato for perpetuating this fraudulent idea) many peopless have independently developled some mystical version of what is essentially for form of Essentialism--an idea that there is an idealized *whatever*...that bears have an overarching Bear Spirit...really, what are gods but better versions of humans?

We humans are notoriously bad at sensing patterns where there are none (and thinking things are random when they aren't), sensing things that aren't there, missing things that aren't there, seeing what we want to see, and ignoring things that don't fit our preconceptions... I could offload dozens of studies by numerous researchers if anyone is interested, but basically, our brains are amazing...but quirky.


Let me tell you the tale of Caveman Bob...

Caveman Bob, who was looking for a new place for the family to live (they were nigh on starving), had a dream about a beautiful woman with come hither eyes pointing to a bend in the river and saying *ugh-aht* (which means "there" in Caveman Bob) turning into a tree. The next day, he saw a tree by the bend in a river that had a graceful look to it, and made camp, and caught enough fish to feed his family for a season in the first night there...well, it must have been because the tree is really a "woman" (not because Caveman Bob saw what he wanted to see because he missed all the details that *didn't* match his dream), and because Caveman Bob's wife can't turn into a tree, this dream lady must be a very special...maybe unworldy...woman intent on protecting them and helping them.

Caveman Bob comes to the conclusion that tree cannot be cut down (it would offend the Lady) and maybe Caveman Bob family should give stuff to it because of all that it has given them... Hey, they've started a religion!

Over time, Bob's family and desendents find better ways to worship the Lady in the Tree by the River--she really likes the color blue, because after someone brought her shrine blue flowers and sang a new song the unusually rainy rains that had caused the river to flood (more than usual) and threatened their (now expanded) village stopped and there was a rainbow, which became the start of the Blue Flower and Singing Festival and ritual performed by the whole village every spring, to prevent their town from being threatened by the spring floods.

And over more time Lady in the Tree by the River goes through some linguistic evolution* to become Lateira, Goddess of the Bobbites of Boblandia, patroness of fishermen, trees, rivers, and travelers. (little does Caveman Bob or his decendents know, but the real reason for the lotsa fish when he and his family decided to stay is an unusually high amount of benthic macroinvertebrates due to increased nutrient levels as a result of the unique geological features of this particular area of the river)



Religions endured not because it is based in an actual reality of physics in the Universe (though we might find that it is and we just haven't figured the mechanics out yet), but because they are a survivial mechanism. When it comes down to human survival (and evolution) we don't do so as a species, but as individual populations...religions offer a way to tie people together that wouldn't ordinairly do so, since they come from different backgrounds, families, etc. Think about this in (incredibly over-simplified) proto-human terms...Savanah Sally and her baby are part of Early hominid group A living in an area with lots of food (she married into the group), but her mom and brother live in an area where the's been a food shortage due to a fire. Mom and brother have family ties, and come to visit Sally and her new clan and are welcomed because of the family bond. But Up-River Rita and her tribe live several weeks journey from Down-River Ron and his tribe...they aren't related, and in the past they've occasionally been hostile. But, due to lack of rain for a few seasons, the waters are too shallow to catch enough fish to feed everyone and they migrate down the river. The URR and DRR tribes meet...and while a war could have broken out (there are no kinship ties between them), it seems our two peoples both worship the river...so they have something in common to bond. Add some common enmity to this (maybe a third group trying to enroach on the river territory with not even a river god in common), and you have two groups able to survive without any common tie, other than the fact that they both gave agency to a body of running water.



Now, if you want to say that this means that religion is made up, then, sure...its made up. IMO, I don't think that it means that religion is made up, I think that it means that religion operates on a level other than that merely the concrete and objective materialsm of the physical.**



*An example of linguistic evolution: "Up until about 400 years ago, pease referred to either a single pea or many peas. At some point, people mistakenly assumed that the word pease was the plural form of pea, and a new word was born" (source) Also, there are natural shifts in pronunciation, etc that occur over time...


**ETA: I don't think that the fact that religions are "made up" means that the reason for them are made up. I think its entirely possible that we are identifying something numinous...I just think that most of the trappings over the numinous are of our own making.

[Thorbjorn]

Re: Unverified Personal Gnosis

*An example of linguistic evolution: "Up until about 400 years ago, pease referred to either a single pea or many peas. At some point, people mistakenly assumed that the word pease was the plural form of pea, and a new word was born" (source) Also, there are natural shifts in pronunciation, etc that occur over time...

Oh, like "licen plate", or "my bicep is killing me" (biceps is the singular).

Anyway...

I have a lot of upg, at least according to what "real Heathens" say Heathenry is. They may be right and my upg is a lot of Christian and Hindu baggage, with the idea of personal gods. Much of my upg centers on feeling a closer connection to the gods, especially Thor, than to the ancestors and wights. Most Heathens I'm seeing on the 'net say it's more about ancestors, wights and the "tribe". Well, I don't know my ancestors and I have few people I can call my tribe or community, apart from my family, none of whom are Heathen or anything closely resembling it. But the family as tribe goes without saying, though I am a solo Heathen practitioner, even when someone else is in the house. I don't believe the gods hover over me, micromanage, or spy on me, but I think they are ready, willing and able to come to my aid. I'm a polytheist who worships the gods because I think the gods are there to be worshiped. So, I have lots of upg but I've learned to state and recognize my beliefs as upg lest they become mus.

[sionnach]

Re: Unverified Personal Gnosis

The proto-Indo-Europeans. And MUS.

Sorry not familiar with MUS and using proto-Indo-Europeans just puts off the question of where their source of knowledge was. Where did they draw their beliefs from?

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Unverified Personal Gnosis

MUS - defined previously in this thread = Making Up Stuff

[thalassa]

Re: Unverified Personal Gnosis

Sorry not familiar with MUS and using proto-Indo-Europeans just puts off the question of where their source of knowledge was. Where did they draw their beliefs from?

MUS= Making Up S***


And where any early group of humans got their knowledge (religious or otherwise) from--from their environment and their experiences.

[Medusa]

Re: Unverified Personal Gnosis

Why do we act like the 'mystical' or the 'inner stuff' is so special over the physical? I mean our insides produce this 'mystical' gas. Then it comes outside and we find out it's just a fart.

I ain't even being flippant. That's how I personally feel about the importance of this mystical label we can only find inside of ourselves. As if we could never be 'gasp' wrong about what we are perceiving.
*this is the tldr version of making bad perception calls as mentioned earlier. Sorry I don't have special letters to add to make me fit in. But here you go: I feel the mbs is pretty much full of pbs. And my fa is just wtsoit.

I won't even go to the flat earth comparison. Let's go somewhere closer. Remember Thalidomide? (wow. Spelled it without spellcheck too!)

[Bjorn]

Re: Unverified Personal Gnosis

I've tried to follow this thread. But abbreviations are driving me nuts.


I just want to address this in general. I mean at one point religion had to come from somewhere before it was in a book. The source source so to speak. I want to give an opinion that I know will make me sound snarky. But...
Could the answer be 'we made it up'? I mean sometimes you know..the simplest answer has a ring of truth. I guess that's my personal gnosis.

Mine too. 'On the first day, man made god,' and all that (in a clumsy, sleep deprived nutshell).

- - - Updated - - -

Why do we act like the 'mystical' or the 'inner stuff' is so special over the physical? I mean our insides produce this 'mystical' gas. Then it comes outside and we find out it's just a fart.

I ain't even being flippant. That's how I personally feel about the importance of this mystical label we can only find inside of ourselves. As if we could never be 'gasp' wrong about what we are perceiving.
*this is the tldr version of making bad perception calls as mentioned earlier. Sorry I don't have special letters to add to make me fit in. But here you go: I feel the mbs is pretty much full of pbs. And my fa is just wtsoit.

I won't even go to the flat earth comparison. Let's go somewhere closer. Remember Thalidomide? (wow. Spelled it without spellcheck too!)

The site won't let me give you any more karma until I spread some more love around. This amuses me. But yeah, once again, me too.

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Unverified Personal Gnosis

What it looks like to me is that there are two kinds of people in this discussion:

Those who believe that there is a "truth" which is independent of the world/the universe/the people/physicality, which can be learned only through a historical study or through divine revelation...

...and those who believe that "truth" must, in some way, coincide with the world/the universe/the people/physicality, and, therefore, will either have a function, or leave trace evidence, and can be learned by examining that function or trace evidence.

I'd like to entertain the first as a mental hypothetical, but I can not even imagine how to tell if a thing is true or not without testing it in some way - but as soon as I consider the possibility of a test, I default to the second position...

[sionnach]

Re: Unverified Personal Gnosis

What it looks like to me is that there are two kinds of people in this discussion:

Those who believe that there is a "truth" which is independent of the world/the universe/the people/physicality, which can be learned only through a historical study or through divine revelation...

...and those who believe that "truth" must, in some way, coincide with the world/the universe/the people/physicality, and, therefore, will either have a function, or leave trace evidence, and can be learned by examining that function or trace evidence.

I'd like to entertain the first as a mental hypothetical, but I can not even imagine how to tell if a thing is true or not without testing it in some way - but as soon as I consider the possibility of a test, I default to the second position...

Sort of like nuclear physics - everytime you try to isolate particles you have changed them in some way which alters their reality - the experimenter in trying to measure changes the dynamics and therefor never can be certain. At least that is what I remembered learning years ago.

I personally believe that knowledge for at least the Northern pre-Christian beliefs came from nature itself mixed with a belief that the nature had power that was translated into the symbolic deities or spirits which we inherited in the mythology finally recorded. In recognizing the patterns as the moon or sun cycles they experienced a mystical/spiritual connection with the world around them . This experience is what I understand to be gnosis.

There is very interesting research on what I had mentioned before of the cognitive conscious and cognitive unconscious. It seems we have two cognitive processes going on at the same time. One - the unconscious is connecting all forms of sensory information that the conscious is not aware of influencing the cognitive decision making. The feeling of intuition or sensation of connection which cannot be explained in exact conscious terms is influencing the conscious brain. If this is true then we may able to connect with a spiritual world that we cannot explain in conscious terms and the gnosis experience or mystical experience is when the Cognitive conscious accepts this without requiring an explanation that can be translated into words.


A second view can be that there is a real connection between all living and even non living aspects of the world in which we just do not yet understand. I remember reading Ted Andrews books on how nature can communicate to a person if they are willing to be open to the possibility. Of course there is much criticism of this especially when terms of spirit animals starts appearing in the discussion. I found many of his ideas interesting and may not be so far from how many pre-Christian beliefs operated. Thus the patters of birds movement had a symbolic meaning for example. There are patterns in nature that have long been seen as predictive. Since there is no way yet to prove that there is any intentional communication the acceptance of this becomes a personal gnosis meaning the pattern has a spiritual meaning beyond just an observational one.

[thalassa]

Re: Unverified Personal Gnosis

What it looks like to me is that there are two kinds of people in this discussion:

Those who believe that there is a "truth" which is independent of the world/the universe/the people/physicality, which can be learned only through a historical study or through divine revelation...

...and those who believe that "truth" must, in some way, coincide with the world/the universe/the people/physicality, and, therefore, will either have a function, or leave trace evidence, and can be learned by examining that function or trace evidence.

I'd like to entertain the first as a mental hypothetical, but I can not even imagine how to tell if a thing is true or not without testing it in some way - but as soon as I consider the possibility of a test, I default to the second position...

Corbin, if you ever get the chance to pick up a copy (or if I find a second copy used again because the original isn't cheap), I really recommend this book. Its basically an anthropological, archaeological, ecological and evolutionary study of how we went from the second to the first in some cultures, and didn't in others.