David Litwa is now on talking about Gnostic self-deification.
Is Gnosticism the Gospel of Narcissism as an orthodox scholar proposed?
Yes, but it’s a slow-burn self-realization, not a single flash of divinity. A slow finality with the self assimilated with the Alien God.
But the heresy hunters said Gnostics were arrogant and stuck up.
David gives three moments:
- The Gnostic discovers a divine core. Part of God is within us.
- Gnostics reflect to that divine core until he or she accepts it’s the real self. Rituals may vary
- The Gnostic meets that divinity in an outer form, the Gnostic Revealer. Maybe Morpheus or Jesus?
David says it’s all about making the inside like the outside/the outside like the inside as divinity meets in the awareness of the individual.
Simon Magus truly represents this, the allegedly arrogant ancient rock star yet who truly was god humbled on earth.
David gives the legend of Apsitoth and his parrots, a dude who trained parrots to say his name as god and then fooled the Libyans. Until he got caught.
Hypolitus says Apsitoth was wiser than Simon and his Great Declaration.