From the Nag Hammadi Library with the different times of day and days of the week. She reveals for us the macrocosm of human experience in the microcosm of the passing hours and days. Reverent introspection in the moment yields recognition of the sacredness and eternity of who we are and what our lives mean. Book jacket.
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time The Gnostic Gospels is a landmark study of the long-buried roots of Christianity, a work of luminous scholarship and wide popular appeal. First published in 1979 to critical acclaim, winning the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Gnostic Gospels has continued to grow in reputation and influence over the past two decades. It is now widely recognized as one of the most brilliant and accessible histories of early Christian spirituality published in our time. In 1945 an Egyptian peasant unearthed what proved to be the Gnostic Gospels, thirteen papyrus volumes that expounded a radically different view of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ from that of the New Testament. In this spellbinding book, renowned religious scholar Elaine Pagels elucidates the mysteries and meanings of these sacred texts both in the world of the first Christians and in the context of Christianity today. With insight and passion, Pagels explores a remarkable range of recently discovered gospels, including the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, to show how a variety of “Christianities” emerged at a time of extraordinary spiritual upheaval. Some Christians questioned the need for clergy and church doctrine, and taught that the divine could be discovered through spiritual search. Many others, like Buddhists and Hindus, sought enlightenment—and access to God—within. Such explorations raised questions: Was the resurrection to be understood symbolically and not literally? Was God to be envisioned only in masculine form, or feminine as well? Was martyrdom a necessary—or worthy—expression of faith? These early Christians dared to ask questions that orthodox Christians later suppressed—and their explorations led to profoundly different visions of Jesus and his message. Brilliant, provocative, and stunning in its implications, The Gnostic Gospels is a radical, eloquent reconsideration of the origins of the Christian faith.
This text is based on one of the great religious literary discoveries; the finding of the Gnostic Gospels in Upper Egypt in 1945. Following an introduction to the Gnostic tradition, June Singer chooses 56 excerpts from the gospels offering them as a focus for meditation or worship.
A study of gnosticism examines the various ways early Christians strove to define themselves in a pluralistic Roman society, while questioning the traditional ideas of heresy and orthodoxy that have previously influenced historians.
Leaving behind both fear and belief, Samael Aun Weor explains through vivid stories what happens when we die and how we can prepare ourselves now to take full advantage of the experience. Instructions to prepare the soul for the process of dying and the experiences of the afterlife are found within the scriptures of every mystical tradition, especially the Bible, The Theban Recension (Egyptian Book of the Dead), and the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead), yet they are veiled in cryptic symbolism and are difficult for most people to understand. Now, for the first time, this book fearlessly approaches the topics of death, dying, and the afterlife for our day and age -- and for those who are tired of theories and are ready to know the truth through their own experience.
The Gnostic Book of Prayer is the daily Psalter of the Gnostic Nazoreans. It contains the liturgy and Hymns of Light that accompany full body prostrations before the Gnostic Gods and Goddesses of Life and Light. These daily devotions for the Gnostic Hours of Qadumia, Tziphra, Tlata, Shitaya, Tesha, Ramsha, Shlama, Sitara, Lilya and Anpia come from two ancient and relatively unknown Gnostic scrolls - the Mandaean Qulasta and the Manichaean Hymnscroll. This Breviary also contains a list and explanation of the many Gods and Goddesses of both Nazoreans and Manichaeans.This collection represents the Gnostic equivalent of the Breviaries and Liturgical Books of Hours used by non Gnostic Christianity.
Devotion and spiritual practices are an essential component of the Gnostic tradition. Therefore, in the tradition of little offices, daily cycles of prayer in imitation of the Divine Office, The Little Office of the Blessed Sophia is offered to Gnostics in the hope that it will help them develop a personal practice of regular prayer. Sanctifying the hours of the day with meditative prayer is a time-honored Christian tradition, and these five daily offices, centered around the mystic Odes of Solomon, are designed to both elevate our consciousness to the Divine Light, and increase our reverence and love of the Most Holy Sophia: Divine Wisdom. This book of hours consists of the Ordinary of the Little Office, the regular prayers to be said at each hour (or time) of prayer for the day; the Book of Odes, with the Odes of Solomon organized according to a 3-day cycle; a book of commemorations for the feasts of over 100 saints and various other holy days; and finally, an Office of the Dead, for prayer in honor of the departed. Small enough to carry around, may this book become an important part of your prayer life, leading you to a deeper knowledge and love of the Ineffable Father, of Christ His Son, of the Holy Sophia, and of all the blessed saints of the Light.
Regardless of their sometimes ambiguous concepts of God, the Roman Stoic philosophers did acknowledge Him, but on the basis of reason alone, because they had not met Christ. Nonetheless, they did deduce from God's existence our need to live lives of virtue, honor, tranquility, and self-control--and they developed effective techniques to help us achieve this. Musonius Rufus the teacher, Epictetus the slave, Seneca the adviser to emperors, and Marcus Aurelius, the emperor himself, produced a practical technology we can use to integrate Christian ethics into our own daily practice. As Kevin Vost so wonderfully illustrates in his new book, The Porch and the Cross, the Stoics can help us learn--and remember--what is up to us, and what is up to God alone.