The Gnostic 3

The Gnostic

Issue 3

Bardic Press

The Gnostic Issue Three offers an impressive range of articles, each of which are much longer than you would normally see in a magazine, leaving far more room for the exploration of the themes under discussion. In many ways it is more of a journal than a magazine coming in over 200 pages.

It opens with a fascinating interview with David Tibet, the last remaining member of Current 93 as he discusses music, Gnosticism, Coptic Mysticism and lots more. We then get solidly into Liber Novus, the Red Book of Carl Jung. This work has been long unavailable and only recently published and offers astounding insights into the period of Jung’s life when he wrote The Seven Sermons of the Dead. It is certainly an initiatory quest feed by visualization and persistence yielding power visions and an experience of real gnosis. This essay also explores key themes which are found throughout Jung’s work which are embodied in this experience.

We next dive into Déjà vu and consider what it suggests about time and consciousness. This is followed by a comprehensive consideration of a lesser known work from the Nag Hammadi library, the Authoritative Discourse. We come to appreciate this work of Christian Platonism through comparison with other texts such as the Hymn of the Pearl and the works of Philo.

William Blake has always been an enigma and interpretations of his works abound. Here we get a gnostic standpoint on his work which is both insightful and persuasive. An examination of coincidences is followed by the quirky Gospel of Toni, some fiction and even a comic !

The 10^th Chapter of the Gospel of Luke is given a surprisingly exegesis from a Gnostic perspective followed by a quite breathtaking article on gnostic themes in Japanese anime. The Apocalypse of Peter, a wild strain of gnostic gospel gets alook-in but ultimately seems to be more about intra-sect feuds and Daniel Matt offers us his insights on Kabbalah and the Zohar.

After examining the nature of higher intelligence with reference to science and spirituality we have a good look at Robert Graves, a truly eccentric author who seemed to combine goddess worship, Gnosticism and rationalism into a truly iconoclastic mix. His work White Goddess still amazes and confuses. While his later works on Christianity included King Jesus, which presented a pagan Christ, and the Nazarene Gospel Restored, which he wrote with Joshua Podro attempted to explored Christian origins in a new way. He also produced many books on myths including Greek Myths and Hebrew Myths with Raphael Patai.

The Gnostic Three continues with rare extracts from Theodotus, the Temple and the Divine on how we should view places of worship and scriptures and a response to an essay in Gnostic Two which focuses on the Eglise Gnostique of Doinel. There are reflections on dualism and a wide range of book reviews.

This is certainly a comprehensive magazine covering Gnosticism in a truly erudite yet approachable manner. There is a wide and diverse range of articles with more than enough to challenge and stimulate.