Y'all know I'm turning into a witch with my Tarot Cards … I'm not ashamed, either - HA! Warlock? Wizard? I don't know. All around “heretical apostate” pretty much sums it up.
Anyways.
The other day I pulled a card from my deck called "The Sun" and although I won't get into what the card is all about here, I will tell you about something I read in a book that was helping me reflect on what the card might be speaking into my life.
In her book "Seventy-Either Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness", Rachel Pollack says something very interesting about the Gnostic Christians.
Wait, pause.
Gnostics? In a Tarot book? Yessss. I've said this in so many places, but friends - it's ALL tied together.
Christianity.
Gnostic Christianity.
Buddhism.
Paganism.
Tarot.
… It's all intertwined and messily beautiful.
Anyways, Rachel says this, "the Gnostics believed that the Fall had broken up the godhead into the bits and pieces of existence. Most important, the light had become imprisoned (rather than simply contained) in individual bodies. It was each person's duty, through Gnostic rites, to release the light within his/her body so that unity could be restored."
NOW.
There are all sorts of problems with this understanding, we'll say that off the bat.
FIRST.
I'm not sure there is such a thing as a FALL. (To me) the concept of the fall insinuates that there was something to fall from; and if I fall from it … it’s now out of reach.
Right?
Adam and Eve, the theology says, fell from perfection when they ate from the forbidden tree and (thus) introduced sin into the world.
But, did they fall from perfection?
When Adam and Eve ate from the tree, did they become the thing they did?
Did they become one with their sin?
Did they fall away from God's … love?
OR.
Were they just 2 perfect people who acted in a perfectly human way?
I mean …
Does a mistake negate a person's goodness?
Does it stain their perfection so much so that they become imperfect?
Does it make them fall away from God's love? Grace? Mercy? Presence? Compassion? Light?
I'm not sure.
I think the Fall is a messy theology that has done much to shame, outcast, and hurt very innocent people and has been little more than a tool used by the church to hold people in bondage all the while preaching a Christ who has come to set those same people free.
SECOND.
Rachel says that the Gnostics believed the light was "imprisoned in the human body" instead of simply "contained". There’s a branch of Gnosticism that demonizes the body and sees it (and everything related to it) as evil … and I’m really resistant to it.
Why?
Because I think the human body is good, I think human flesh is infused with the Divine, kept afloat by the breath of the Divine, and sustained by the power of the Divine.
… My body isn’t a dark, damp prison, it’s a light-filled and joyful home.
LASTLY.
Not all Gnostics believed this stuff in Rachel’s quote. One of the things I've learned in my conversations with Bart Ehrman, David Brakke, Elaine Pagels, and others is that "Gnostics" is a very broad term that has been used to refer to MANY streams of early Christian thought and is (therefore) a word that carries a lot of baggage.
Did some Gnostics believe this? I’m sure. But I would be more comfortable saying that there was an early stream of Christian thought which "believed that the Fall had broken up the godhead into the bits and pieces of existence. Most important, the light had become imprisoned (rather than simply contained) in individual bodies. It was each person's duty, through Gnostic rites, to release the light within his/her body so that unity could be restored."
SO.
All of that said, I still like the idea that this quote is shining a light on because I believe that we are all Divine and that although we sometimes forget this core part of our nature, our role here in this life is to wake up to (or begin to wake up to) and remember who we really are and live accordingly.
Our role is to come to a place where we begin to respond to the situations that life throws at us …
Not out of hate, but love.
Not out of bitterness, but forgiveness.
Not out of war, but peace.
Not out of revenge, but compassion.
Yes.
I think Jesus came to show us that at the deepest part of our humanity is a seed of Divinity and it's from this place that we are invited to live our lives. And this is why, I think, that in John 14:12 Jesus said that WE would do even GREATER things than he did.
Why?
Because when we collectively wake up to and remember who we are and begin to live our lives from that place, from a place of love and grace and peace and compassion.
Well.
The sky is limit, right? Imagine if every single one of us awoke to, remembered, and lived from our truest selves? If we all lived from the Divine seed planted within us? If we all tapped into that? At the same time?
Parents.
Children.
Teachers.
World leaders.
… Everyone? Imagine the ways that the world would shift, the atmosphere would change, the cosmos would light up a new if all the bits and pieces of Divine seeds within us came awoke and came together at the same time.
May it be so.
Much love.
Glenn || MY BOOK || PATREON || BUY ME A COFFEE
Beautiful, Glenn.