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Gnostic Reformation, Clear and Simple

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by Cyd Charise Ropp

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Most of the gnosis presented here comes from the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi codices. My retelling of the mythos is just good news for modern man. It is not hermetic; it is not a translation of wisdom from an Egyptian God. It is not New Age. This Gnostic Gospel is simply the story of who we are and where we come from. The gnosis I am sharing here honors God the Father and, as you begin to remember this inherent truth, you will experience a more joyful life. When we use our free will to remember our true inheritance, the god of this fallen universe loses its power to control us. When we turn our eyes upward to the Father--the God Above All Gods--we are freed from the burdens of this world. Once you begin to remember that you are truly loved by our heavenly Father, you will suffer less. When you begin to walk with virtue rather than embracing vice, you will be happier; you will be joyful. Not all of the time. Bad things do happen. But suffering as a response to life’s challenges is unnecessary. We are living in a fallen world, and that, I suppose, is another gnostic heresy. For some reason, modern Christians want to insist that this world is blessed by God and is blessedly perfect. But we all know this world we live in isn’t perfect and when you deny that fact you become unduly frustrated and sad, even to the point of depression. Pharmaceuticals are not the solution--gnosis is. Gnosis means knowing. This sort of knowing is not related to book learning. Gnosis refers to remembering what you already know. The point of spiritual study is not to learn new things but to mine what you already possess deep inside of you. When you study new ideas, you must continually weigh the information you are taking in against your own discernment. The purpose of this podcast is not so much to teach you about Gnosticism; the purpose is to stimulate your own innate gnosis. And there is really only one gnosis that matters in the end—remembering the Father, your cosmic origin, and the purpose of being alive. <a href="https://cydropp.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">cydropp.substack.com</a>

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July 18, 2026

True Gnosis: A Modern Gnostic Approach

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. For the last four weeks we’ve been listening to my interview with Bishop Nathan Wilson concerning the Gnostic Union and his interpretation of the New Testament and also some Gnostic texts.And I want to make comment on it, although it’s very difficult to compose a comment on this long interview. I don’t want to in any way malign or make light of Brother Nathan’s work on translating the New Testament from the original Koine Greek, as opposed to the way most Bibles are handed down, which are just derivation after derivation after derivation of an original translation into Latin, basically.Brother Nathan’s translation of the New Testament is called <a target="_blank" href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FC75iEj6lpntAEnvlwpsAkpCNaVzUcbV/view?fbclid=IwY2xjawShDe5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeeSGbrX8AzRXBf1vYINj6SszVlJDTnYhNgz_ng_dw2U0U9JNXYoW5kph5aQ0_aem_cfqZlleukRZuZuyrig15cQ">The Gnostic Christian Truth Bible—you can take a look at it.</a> It’s free. He’s made it publicly available online, and I’ll put the link here in the transcript.Brother Nathan’s translation really does restore the flavor of Gnosticism back into the New Testament, because as we know, the Catholic Church and the Emperor of Rome in the 300s A.D. stripped gnosis and Gnosticism out of the New Testament to the extent that they could, and they changed the translation of many Gnostic words into more vanilla type of language that doesn’t convey the gnosis that is contained within the work.So his is a very important contribution. But there’s a big however coming up here, and that however is this: Gnosticism is essentially a mystic connection to the Father, and so all of our interpretations of what is written must be processed through that comprehension of our relationship to the Father, and the Father’s originating consciousness—the Father as the Source, the Father as the Father-Mother, if you will.And when Jesus said, “I and my Father are one; if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father,” he was referring to what we Gnostics call the God Above All Gods. So that’s a very important point. If you study the words of Jesus and don’t meander into the writings of Paul, for example, you will have a much clearer Gnostic understanding of the Father and our relationship to the Father, to Abba God, to the God Above All Gods, as we Gnostics put it. The word for that in Hebrew was El Elyon, and Brother Thomas brings that up in his translation, in his discussion.I’ve always been very interested in ancient documents, especially ancient spiritual or holy scriptures, not only in the Christian or Jewish tradition, but also in the Chinese tradition, the Tao Te Ching being the primary example in my life, and in the Indian traditions of yogic philosophy. So I wouldn’t say don’t read biblical scriptures, don’t read holy scriptures, because I gained a lot of knowledge, true knowledge, concerning the Father through these scriptures.But the thing is, you cannot connect with the Father only through reading scripture, or only through hearing preaching about scripture, or only reading people’s books about various books, because then you are filtering your connection with the ethereal realm through human translation, through human interpretation. We need to have a direct mystical connection. I’ve never particularly used that word, mystical, because it kind of implies, you know, woo-woo gypsies, and woo-woo new age and this kind of thing, and you don’t want to go in that direction either.But what mystical actually means is having a direct spiritual connection to the ethereal realm. And when I say ethereal realm, I’m not talking about channeling—channeling as in the nature of the Urantia book, or channeling as in the work of Edgar Cayce, because in my opinion, channeling while in a trance-like state opens you up to any kind of non-material influence. And you don’t know if those are angels, you don’t know if those are Aeons, you don’t know if that is the Father, you don’t know if that is an archon, or a daemon, or a lesser god. So this applies to the Ouija board just as well. You do not want to open yourself up to those sorts of influences, because we can be easily deceived, and that is a trap.That deception is part of the imitation. Now those early Catholic church fathers possibly thought they were doing a good thing by throwing the gnosis out, by throwing this idea of mystic out, because they didn’t want people to be deceived and led down the wrong rabbit trails away from God rather than toward God. I’m not sure that was their motivation. We Gnostics generally have a negative view of the church in the 300s and thereafter as being about control, and manipulation, and power. These are not godly attributes. These are human institutional attributes.So I emphasize a direct connection with the Father exactly, or with the Christ. Now let’s talk about the Christ for a minute.People get uncomfortable when talking about Christ, or the Christ. People don’t want to believe in Jesus, because, well, it’s too Christian, and you’ve heard too many evangelicals preaching on crazy radio broadcasts, or you were raised in an evangelical church with an unloving leadership, and an unloving congregation, and you would be right to be wary. But what I share with you here at Gnostic Insights and the Gnostic Reformation is what I believe to be a true relationship to actual Christ and to Jesus Christ.So this is another reason why I am not in favor of delving into history and trying to learn about God, or about your proper relationship to God and heaven, and all these kinds of questions through history, or through transcripts that have been funneled through human imagination and human interpretation. This is why you must go directly to the Father. Well, how? How? Prayer. That’s what prayer is. Prayer is talking to the Father, or talking to Christ, or talking with Jesus, and waiting on their answers, waiting on those directions. Yes, it does work, and no, you don’t have to be purified to a certain extent in order to establish that kind of mystical connection. The Bible does promise that God will come to you. God will come to you even before you turn to him. So in order to turn to the Father, you need to turn.Metanoia. You need to turn. You need to take your eyes off of the world, take your eyes off of your own desires and ambitions, i.e. your ego, and turn your eyes upward to the Father. Now, this is an interesting thing. I’ve been thinking about upward. Why do we keep saying that the ethereal plane is upward? Well, I actually think that that is perhaps a misunderstanding of something we don’t have the word for.We don’t know exactly where the ethereal plane is, so we say it’s upward because down is the material, and the dirt, and the under the dirt, which is generally considered negative. That’s why I always say onward and upward. I actually think it’s another dimension in the mathematical sense, so we don’t have a word for that. We don’t have a word for appealing to a different dimension. We might as well say upward, or even more profoundly, you know, physics does not claim that this material world is actually substantial. The closer you dial in the microscopes to the lowest, and lowest, and smallest, and smallest so-called particles of our material existence, they disappear. They evaporate. It’s all space. It’s all empty space with vibrations, with energetic movement, but there’s no there there. It probably all reduces to consciousness itself.The Father is pure consciousness. We derive from that consciousness, so the fallen state is really in its most sophisticated form probably nothing more than stepping out of the essential resonance of the Father’s consciousness. Our vibratory pattern has become locked onto this so-called material pattern, and again, that sounds kind of new age and whatnot, but it’s not. It’s physics. It’s mathematical, and when we’re talking about math, and we’re talking about physics, and we’re talking about reason, and logic, that is, the Word, Logos.That is the Word of God, that vibratory pattern. So what we’re trying to do is re-establish coherency with the Father, and that’s generally suggested to do through prayer—that is moving your intention off of the world, off of you, and your concerns, and your ego, and moving that intention toward the Father, and expressing your desire to be one with the Father. Generally, what you do is then at that point after prayer, which is your expression of intention, is give glory, because giving glory is the closest way. It’s the direct path to tune into the Father’s resonance, because the Father is the bedrock of glory.The Father is glorious. The Father is consciousness. The Father is love. The Father is purity. The Father is true knowledge.Down here where we are, the things we “learn”—that isn’t necessarily knowledge. That is, we could call information. That is, we could call history. That is, we could call language study or philology. Around us in the world, we have everybody else’s patterns going on, everybody else’s vibrations, so to speak. They produce information. They produce output, output, output, output, but not necessarily knowledge, gnosis. The gnosis only comes from above.The gnosis cannot be mined out of history. So the reason I reject the study of historical Gnosticism is because those were just people practicing what they thought was Gnosticism. That was people way back then, supposedly, because who knows how true our history is, right? There could be mistakes all the way up to today, but when you study history, you’re just studying other people’s notions.Even St. Paul of the New Testament, those were his notions about God and Christ, because Paul never met Christ. Paul didn’t walk with Christ. He had an encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus after Jesus had already been dead and risen and gone. Well, you can have your own Damascus reckoning with Christ, just like Paul did. See, Paul was a studied Orthodox Jew. He really knew his Torah inside and out, and he was a warrior on behalf of the Jewish traditions against this newly emerging messianic tradition of following Christos, Jesus as the Christ. He rejected Jesus as the Messiah. He was thoroughly embroiled in that battle against Jesus Christ. And that’s why his turning as he traveled the road to Damascus on yet another pogrom of killing Christians, and he had his face-to-face reckoning and came to realize that he was wrong, led him to establish a direct connection with the Father and with Jesus, totally informed by his knowledge of the Torah or the Jewish Bible. So this is why so much of Paul’s writing is expressed in the language of the Torah.But you needn’t be a Jew to be a Christian, and you needn’t be a modern Christian to be a true Christian, because modern Christianity is thoroughly derived from this watered-down and whitewashed version of Christianity that the Catholic Church allowed to proceed out of the Nicene Councils, having stripped all of the Gnosticism out that they could. Some of it did seep in, because those men of the Nicene Council were not Gnostic. They didn’t have the gnosis, so they didn’t even see the subtleties of what they were leaving in and taking out. They just stripped out the most obvious Gnosticism, and that was the translation then that came down to us as the New Testament.And these are the words that Brother Nathan rightly recognizes in the original fragments of manuscripts that he has translated, the Gnostic words that are still there but were wrongly translated or purposely mistranslated in order to water down the Gnosticism. Those words that he reinserted back into his New Testament translation—Logos, Kosmos, Zoe, Sophia, Archon, Magus, Damon—he put those back in where they belong, and now we can understand better what the New Testament writers were saying.But as far as the history behind the changes or all this talk about Simon Magus and why it was they retranslated the word Magus to get rid of Simon Magus, and this talk of Sophia being the feminine wisdom, being the feminine, essentially, aspect of God, and that that’s why the Sethian, well, that’s why most Gnostics speak of Sophia as the fallen Aeon. The Tripartite Tractate does not mention Sophia, and the Aeon that fell is Logos. So to me, if you don’t make a big deal out of gender, because, see, the Father, the Source—it contains all truth. It contains all knowledge. So down here, we are split into genders because we have sexual relations to reproduce, and there are certain personality types that seem to go with one gender or the other, and these are based upon your Aeonic parentage. So there are girly girl Aeons, and there are masculine men Aeons, and there are Aeons that are just neutral, that don’t matter at all about gender.What is the gender of mathematics? What is the gender of chemistry? See, it’s an irrelevant and nonsensical question. What is the gender of knowledge and reason? What is the gender of wisdom? We’re adding a human interpretation of gender onto these words. What is the gender of happiness? These are things that don’t make sense to me.Now, I do understand the concept of feminine and masculine. Masculine being, well, the way we think of it generally is strength and output and all this kind of thing, but you don’t have to be a man to be “masculine.” The point being assertiveness does not have to be gendered. Receptivity doesn’t have to be gendered. And so when you focus on this idea of divine femininity, it’s okay, it’s lovely to have an affinity for the divine femininity, for the process of birth and nurturing, for Mother Nature in the forest. This is all good. This is probably fairly accurate because these are traits of certain Aeons that you identify with femininity or that we identify with femininity.But to say that they came from an Aeon called Sophia who fell from grace and therefore had an illegitimate child, Yaldabaoth, well, now we’re getting into mythology. And mythology isn’t true knowledge. Mythology is a metaphorical or symbolic way of expressing truths. But it is not in itself “true,” if you get my meaning.So it’s good to love femininity. It’s good to honor women and childbirth and the little woodland creatures. That’s good. But I don’t see the need of identifying them with wisdom, with Sophia. See, the meaning of Sophia—the Aeon’s meaning is wisdom. And the meaning of Logos is knowledge and reason. But they are essentially part of the same basis of gaining knowledge of the Father.The gnosis that I share here from the Tripartite Tractate is not mythology. That’s what makes the Tripartite Tractate such a unique Gnostic book. The other books, unless they are books of wisdom statements, such as the Book of Thomas, the other Gnostic books, generally in the Sethian tradition, are mythologies passed on from older, pre-existing mythologies—Phoenician, Egyptian, working their way through into what we now call Sethian Gnosticism. There’s no need for those mythologies. They don’t teach you anything. They’re just stories. They’re nice stories. If you want to tell your child a bedtime story, you can tell them a myth. That’s fine. That’s what we do. Humans are storytellers. That’s why we like TV and movies and listen to people’s stories. We’re storytellers. The myths of Gnosticism are stories.But gnosis is a different thing. Gnosis is the actual knowledge of the Father. It’s not aboutism. It’s knowing.Now, I want to share with you a comment from one of our subscribers here at the Gnostic Reformation, and his name is Vlad. You can go read it yourself; it was a comment posted to “Understanding Biblical Gnosis, Bishop Wilson’s Perspective” is the name of the episode.Vlad says,This is a rich conversation, thank you for sharing it. The distinction between gnosis as intellectual knowledge and gnosis as direct knowing is essential. The bishop’s work on translation, especially the presence of gnosis in Greek text that gets obscured in English, is valuable. It reminds us that early Christianity was not a system of belief. It was a system of recognition, of remembering, of direct experience. The fragment from Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 840 is fascinating. The image of the Pharisees washing in water that, “dogs and pigs have been thrown into,” while the Savior speaks of being “baptized in the waters of eternal Zoe that has come from God,”is a stark distinction between ritual purity and actual coherence. It is the difference between cleaning the outside of the cup and the inside being full [of wickedness, essentially. He just said being full, but I’m adding full of what? Well, it’s full of the opposite of cleanliness.] The point about the Old Testament God of the Sadducees and the Pharisees not having love is the same point that runs through all Gnostic cosmology. The demiurge creates. The father emanates. The first demands worship. The second invites recognition. One operates through control. The other through love. They are not the same.He goes on to say,I appreciated the observation about Jesus being a therapist, a healer who spends time with people. That word therapia, being the root of our word therapy, is not small. It points to something that gets lost in the dogmatic versions. The one who heals by presence, by spending time, by simply being with. Thank you for this. I will be following along.So that was an excellent comment that I just completely agree with. Okay, this commentary of mine is getting long. There’s so much more I could say about everything, but this was the big picture, and I think I’ve said it.So God bless us all. Turn to God in prayer, and your prayers will be answered with the Father’s presence. It may not be your laundry list of things you want, which is probably ego-generated, but it is what you will need. So you turn, metanoia. You turn to the Father. You relinquish your ego to the glory of the Father. You ask for the indwelling of the Christ, of the third order of powers. And that is how you find gnosis.That’s it. God bless us all. And onward and upward.Please help me keep Gnostic Insights online with your generosity. Thank you for being here!The Gnostic Reformation is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://cydropp.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2">cydropp.substack.com/subscribe</a>

July 10, 2026

Understanding Biblical Gnosis: Bishop Wilson's Perspective

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack.Today’s episode is the last installment of my interview with Bishop Nathan Wilson of The Gnostic Union. Brother Nathan continues with his illustration of how correct translation of the original Koine Greek of the New Testament changes the way we may interpret Biblical scripture more precisely. The translations he shares come from his freely available Gnostic Christian Truth Bible that you can find online in PDF form, with side by side comparisons of the original Koine with English. I’m including the link here in the transcript of the episode, so if you are listening to this in podcast form, you may wish to go to Gnostic Insights dot com to read the transcript. His Bible and other Gnostic scriptures could use another round of editorial polishing, in my opinion, to insert an indexed table of contents, so it may be a bit difficult to make your way through it.And in next week’s episode, I’ll take a long look at what we’ve been hearing for the last four weeks. If you have anything you would like me to discuss or any questions coming off of Bishop Wilson’s discussion, bring them up and we can talk about them on next week’s episode.I know I’m going to want to talk about the role of Sophia and the Divine Feminine and the concept of gender on the ethereal plane. I would also like to talk to you about how the study of history and philology differs from theology and philosophy and how they are not necessarily gnosis. And here at Gnostic Insights, of course, and on the Gnostic Reformation, I avoid talking about gnosis and only share gnosis itself. So I’d like to explain that to you about that as well.So please drop me some comments here at the end of this episode and I can address them in next week’s episode.Bishop Nathan Wilson:So Mark 8:17. All right. So this would be Jesus here.“And having gnosis, he said to them, why reason because you have no bread or do you not understand that the heart of you has been hardened?”So this is among disciples arguing that they have no bread. Jesus having spiritual gnosis, understanding what’s going on, says, “What are you arguing about?” Which is kind of interesting that he mentioned, but I’ll mention something that’s a real kick in the can.So this is in Mark 15:42. And this is a text that no theology want to give you because it would make them feel uncomfortable. And it’s regarding Pontius Pilate having gnosis regarding Jesus crucifixion. So this is a note they definitely do not want. I was kind of thinking about what does this mean? And I figured out what it’s regarding to. Mark 15:45. Okay, so this is Pontius Pilate. I’ll read 15:44 first.“But Pilate wondered if he had already died, having called to him the centurion and questioned him if he had already died. And with gnosis from the centurion, he granted the body to Joseph.”So that meaning inside knowledge from the centurion has been given to him about Jesus. So that could imply that he was still alive and that Pontius might have been involved in this plot. That’s what that text would imply; it doesn’t necessarily have to mean that. It can just mean that within a knowledge he’s been told by the centurion Jesus is dead, so it can apply that too. So however you want to read that text is up to you. But I found that quite fascinating and I had to really look at that. I’m like, well, I’m sorry, we can’t have that in there. That’s why that’s been censored. But that’s fascinating.So we even have Jesus having a gnosis and leaving an area and that’s in Matthew 12:15. I’ll jump into that too. So there’s a couple of scenes that Jesus has gnosis. There’s even times he has gnosis in regarding what other people were thinking. So having to understand them mentally. So that’s cool. So gnosis appears quite often. It’s just it doesn’t appear in the English text. But in the Old Testament it’s even more.Cyd:That’s interesting.Bishop Nathan Wilson:Yes, it is. Very.Okay. So “withdrew from the area” Matthew 12:15 I want. Right.“And Jesus having gnosis, withdrew from there and many great multitudes followed him and he healed them.” Or it can translate to took care of them or cured them all.So that word here we have can be for a therapeia or a therapeo. And this word meaning to heal someone or to spend time with them, to heal them with God’s word or with medicine, to heal them with medical substance, so narcotics. It can be just simply curing them or just spending time with someone so say talking to someone, healing them and their emotions. So healing their emotions. So that’s beautiful. Not just simply Jesus hocus pocus and and leaving. It’s he’s spending time with people. And this word has been used in ancient Greek medical texts for implying medical substances or therapy. So the word therapeia is where our word therapy comes from.So this can be Jesus the therapist. So that’s beautiful. Absolutely fantastic. I like that. So it gives more power to the text. Shows that one person can make a difference. So any one of us can do this and heal multitudes through spiritual touch, through spiritual messaging, through the simple act of love. So that’s powerful. That’s useful.Cyd:And this is something that only people can do. Well, no, actually dogs are very good therapists as well. But I wouldn’t think that an AI therapist or an AI Jesus has any gnosis truly.Bishop Nathan Wilson:I’m not really one big for AI because I think AI is basically just all secondhand information. It’s just built from all our information that we’ve already got. So we have here something else.This is something pretty interesting too. Matthew 16:8. And it’s Jesus having gnosis:“Why do you argue amongst yourselves? You of little faith because you have no bread” [or meaning food.]But say, regarding to the word for artos being bread. So when you have the Jesus prayer, Give us this daily bread, this could translate to give us our daily necessaries of life. That’s much more. So daily maintenance, so being maintained spiritually, being maintained by God, for God giving us the means to live spiritually as well as physically. So it’s much more powerful than just simple, just bread and food. So Jesus speaking a lot of times symbolically. So the symbolic teachings are meant to be useful to all of us. So something that we can practically take on, not simply does something that’s outside of ourselves. So that’s within ourselves that we can actually use. So gnosis.And I’ll go into Matthew 22:18. And that’s with Jesus about having gnosis on the wickedness of the Pharisees. So this doesn’t mean that all Pharisees are bad though. Jesus had Pharisees that followed him. This just means a select few of them. So basically the rich corrupted ones of them. So he was also against the Sadducees too. Mostly Sadducees probably because they were the richer lots. But he was not really a friend to those who were corrupt and using the money that they were given to further subject the people to more condemnation, which Jesus was very much pro-life, was equality where the Pharisees and Sadducees in large numbers were not. Which is a shame.Okay, so 22, I think it was I’m looking for. Matthew 22:18. Okay.Cyd:You know that Old Testament God of the Sadducees and Pharisees doesn’t have love. So they are not getting any gnosis from that Jehovah level.Bishop Nathan Wilson:No. And it goes back to where it’s first worshipped. The first to worship this God, Yahweh, were very violent. They were the Shasu. They were known to force marry the Egyptian and Ethiopian young girls they raided. So when we look at the depictions of the Shasu, they are mixed in colour—they’re black, they’re white, they’re copper skinned. They didn’t care what colour you were, they just took. They were looking for sex slaves, basically wives. So what’s interesting is the same river that they used, the Euphrates River, not all of them were river-based pirates. Some were just tent dwelling nomads. But some of them did have the funds or means to use ships. So we certainly had sea people. So some of those sea people were Canaanite raiders. So they’ll use the Euphrates River to go out raiding, to go out to the main street or elsewhere to raid outside of their own lands. Muslim pirates would use the same river to do the same thing. So that’s interesting.[Editor’s note: The speaker appears to be connecting several groups—nomadic Shasu, Sea Peoples, and later Muslim-era raiders. While the Euphrates served as an important transportation corridor, the specific claim that the Shasu or Sea Peoples used it as river-pirates is not clear from the sources consulted by the CoPilot AI and may reflect an interpretation rather than an established historical consensus. Of course, the AIs are relaying to us approved, conventional data, so their data bases would not contain the types of stories Bishop Wilson speaks of.]All in the name of this Jehovah, in the name of Yahweh, in the name of the demiurge, this evil gets done. And it’s always the poor that suffer, the poor and women. And who are the ones that Jesus is speaking to? The poor and to women. So it’s shocking. So most Christians don’t look at this either. A lot of Muslims don’t either, because they will be following Jesus [Isa]. So who they call Isa, they clearly don’t. So the message contradicts.So Muhammad called himself a man of war. Moses as well. But it depends on what version of Moses you’re looking at as well. So during the time of Jesus, as I mentioned, there were different versions of Judaism. There were different Torahs and different Jewish Bibles. So some believed in a peaceful Moses and even a peaceful Abraham. Others believed in Abraham the Pirat. So Abraham the Pirate. And some didn’t take this view. So others believed in Abraham ready to sacrifice his son. And others believed that he was hearing a fallen angel, mistook it for God, and God had to intervene. And we see this sort of in the Essene story somewhat. So that’s more of a Gnostic take. Some Essenes view, because they’re Dead Sea Scrolls, which is a Qumran Essene sect, they believe that it was Belial that was behind the scenes doing this. And God was basically aware that Belial was doing it and would interfere. So he would do this in order for Belial to expose himself and then be shamed. So a very different story. So the story of Job we read is the Pharisee story, which is Satan being in the angelic courts. So being asked by God, so not acting outside of God. So he was only there to test human beings. So Satan’s not the bad guy in that story. It’s Yahweh.But when we look at other stories, it’s different. Even the Ethiopian version is different. They have two stories. One with Belial and the other one with a figure called Mastema, who is the opponent against God trying to cause the sacrifice of Abraham’s son. So, trippy.So this is regarding to the Pharisees as well.“So Jesus, having gnosis of the wickedness of them, said, Why do you test me, you hypocrites?”So this is in reference to the coin, when he showed them the icon. So what’s interesting about that scene is Judas, who was a Zealot, basically, I think it was Judas of Galilee, who rebelled against Rome, he also said the same thing.“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s.”[Matthew 22:21]So when Jesus is speaking in the scene, he doesn’t touch the coin. The icon on there in question is the emperor who is stating, you know, son of Caesar, son of God. Jesus is saying, no, basically give this back to Caesar and give to Israel, God, what is God’s, which is the land. So Israel. But I don’t think it’s more from the land—I think that’s a zealot opinion.I think when he’s talking about this, when he says Israel, I’m thinking he’s looking at the word context and he’s meaning El preserved so those who belong to El. So when he says those who belong to Israel, he’s not saying just anything, he’s talking about the lost sheep of El Elyon. So those were in other lands, lead them back here. So ones who have gone astray, which is interesting. So ones who are worshipping pagan gods or worshipping Yahweh. So he’s saying, bring them back to El, bring them back to God, repentance. This is why the Pharisees and Sadducees disliked him. He had a different God. Some that liked him as well, but they had trouble understanding it.Cyd:Right. Well, and that is still the case. Hey, we’re going to have to wrap this up in just a few minutes. So is there any scripture you would like to make sure that you share before we wrap it up?Bishop Nathan Wilson:Okay. Well, if you like, I can share either the temple scene, which is a Matthew 21:12, or I can share the little, the short scene of the Pharisees being condemned by Jesus for basically dressing up like prostitutes. You might have a, you might have a lot of that.Cyd:Yeah. Okay. That, that looks to be the one you want to share the most.Bishop Nathan Wilson:So I’ll share that one. It’s very short. So this is the text in general. Just this little bit. Okay. The Greek side is on here. [Nathan displays his fragment facsimile.] So I have the Greek side by side. So this is side one and side two. So side two is even shorter.“So before committing injustice, he carefully plans it all.” So this is Jesus speaking about the evil. “Be on guard, lest you suffer the same things as they.” So this is the Pharisees and Sadducees he’s talking about. “For the evil doers among people do not receive punishment only in this life, but also suffer judgment and great torment. And having received them, he brought them into the purification area. And as he was walking in the temple, a certain Pharisee, a high priest named Soreb [conventional translation is Levi; editorial note],”Which is kind of interesting. That word Zoar/Tzoar [uncertain], is Tsa’ar, [uncertain] which is a city condemned by God [but ultimately spared by God; editorial note]. So this is kind of like a pun on the Pharisee leader being punished by God. So like, possibly, maybe a Pharisee Messiah figure. So meaning they’re rejecting Jesus because they already have their Messiah they believe. So that’s something to be taken into a note. So this Soreb [Levi ?] approaches, met them and said,“Zoar, who gave you permission to walk in the purification area and to look upon these holy vessels, not having washed, nor your disciples having their feet baptized, but having being unclean, you have trampled upon this holy place, which is pure, which no one may enter unless you have bathed and changed into the garments of those baptized. Nor does anyone dare to touch these holy vessels.”So they’re in the temple right now in the inner sanctuary, touching the holy relics and not wearing the same baptism clothing as them. They’re not liking this. So this is what Jesus says.“The Savior answered and said to him, Woe to you blind ones who do not see. You wash in these poured out waters in which dogs and pigs have been thrown into day and night. And after washing your outer skin, you wipe it. And just like the prostitutes and flute players anoint themselves and wash and wipe and adorn themselves to cause the desires of men. But from within, they are full of scorpions and all evil. But I and my disciples who you say are not baptized have been baptized in the waters of eternal Zoe. That has come from God. But woe to those…”And the ending is missing. That’s why side two has not been given. [referring to side two of the fragment which is partially destroyed and not in the public domain]Cyd:Right. Now that’s a fragment. Where was that fragment found?Bishop Nathan Wilson:I forgot. The fragment is called Papyrus Oxyconocus 840. But you can just type in P. Oxy 840. I would say that was probably if I’d gone by memory, that might have been discovered maybe in Alexandria, if not maybe in Thrace, but I believe it was Alexandria, Egypt that might have been discovered. There was one, I believe, that was discovered in the Middle East, maybe Jerusalem. But I believe that one there was discovered in Alexandria. I might be wrong about that. I have to relook where that was discovered. But it is important. So a text that has not been given to public domain yet, which is quite a shame.Cyd:Yeah. Well, it’s been delightful talking to you. And you certainly have an encyclopedic knowledge of these ancient texts. It’s very beautiful. It’s very nice being around you. You have the good vibe.Bishop Nathan Wilson:It’s been a pleasure speaking to you as well, Dr. Cyd Ropp. It’s been an absolute pleasure. So I’m stoked. So sorry if I get excited and all that sort of stuff as well. I love meeting new people, especially fellow spiritual people. Always lovely to see, especially Gnostics.Cyd:Yeah. Well, I recommend The Gnostic Union. Go check out the Facebook site. That’s where all the action is, right? It’s the Facebook site.Bishop Nathan Wilson:And on the YouTube, yeah. We can all get together.Cyd:On the YouTube.Bishop Nathan Wilson:I’ve got a few old videos as well. So you can see the difference in my theology, how it’s changed. My whole belief system changed when I start translating, so I found out I was wrong about a couple of other things. So I still keep some old videos because some people might want to hang on to some of those beliefs as well. I have no problems with that. I’m very open-minded and whichever people want to believe, they can believe, as long as we’re loving to each other and kind. It’s all that matters. Being good humans.Cyd:Right. Well, since we’re going to be putting this on your site as well as mine, let me tell people that I have a Substack called The Gnostic Reformation. And my homepage is GnosticInsights.com.Well, it’s just been a blessing. Thank you very much.Bishop Nathan Wilson:You’re welcome. And feel free to share your stuff on The Gnostic Union Facebook page too. If you ever want to share stuff, feel free to. We accept other people’s work too. So feel free to share it.Cyd:How often? I mean, I post weekly. You don’t want me cross-posting weekly.Bishop Nathan Wilson:Oh, that’s fine. We don’t mind. You can post there weekly. We won’t mind. Anything that’s Gnostic, we’ll gladly accept. So we want to encourage all Gnostic schools of thought and everyone that wants to seek it, we want to encourage that.Cyd:Oh that’s excellent. Okay. Well, thank you so much for being with me today, Bishop Nathan Wilson.God bless us all.Bishop Nathan Wilson:God bless as well. Thank you for having me.Cyd:Okay. Bye-bye. Thank you.Well, that’s the conclusion of that long interview with Bishop Nathan Wilson of The Gnostic Union. These episodes have been running long, a half hour and more, so I think we’ll keep this one short, and give you a break. Until then, drop some comments and questions that I can address in next week’s episode.This interview was recorded via Zoom, and so I have the video of the interview as well as these audios, and I’ve left it as one long video to post to YouTube. So I’m putting it up on YouTube now that we’re done with the audio podcast versions, and you can go to YouTube if you’d like to watch Brother Nathan talking about these things. He does have a few visual aids. His papyrus facsimiles and whatnot are pretty cool to look at. So I encourage you to go to my YouTube channel, Cyd Ropp, and it’s under the Gnostic Insights playlist, and leave a thumbs up. I’m going to try to grow the Gnostic Insights presence there on YouTube. It’s going to take a lot of effort and a lot of support on your part. So please give me a hand here, and let’s kick it off with this Bishop Wilson. The other YouTube video that’s already there is that animated version of my children’s book, Children of the Fullness: A Gnostic Myth. So if you haven’t watched that yet, you could catch it as well. Until then, God bless us all, and Onward and Upward.Until then, drop some comments and questions I can address in next week’s episode. God bless us all and onward and upward.The Gnostic Reformation is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading The Gnostic Reformation! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://cydropp.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2">cydropp.substack.com/subscribe</a>

July 3, 2026

Interview with Bishop Wilson pt. 3

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. We’re continuing this week with part three of my long interview with Bishop Nathan Wilson of the Gnostic Union. We don’t usually talk about this sort of thing here at Gnostic Insights, and so this is a special treat for those of you who like this sort of thing. This week we’re going to hear Brother Nathan speaking about why he chose the words he decided to use in his translation of the New Testament and the Gnostic Gospels.He calls his translation <a target="_blank" href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FC75iEj6lpntAEnvlwpsAkpCNaVzUcbV/view?fbclid=IwY2xjawSro0hleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEe1m0V8OkX_2RjcY0nKkmxyVzVoRcjpbqu3H0U16OTxViAt1flC1nByJC6SXk_aem_RVb1r04wiXRL5zWTFMOiYQ">The Gnostic Christian Truth Bible</a>, and that’s because it includes the original Gnostic words that were chosen and were used by the writers of the Gospels that have been changed and Latinized and Anglicized and don’t have the same Gnostic meanings as the actual original writers used.So in the old days, in the beginning, the Christian religion was much more Gnostic. There were many sects of practicing Gnostics who were Christians and accepted as Christians. Now they were all taken away, and they were all wiped out during that Nicene Council phase in the 300’s when the Catholic Church took over the preaching of the Gospel, and they got rid of the competition, i.e. the Gnostics and others. So what Brother Nathan has done is plugged back in those original Gnostic words, and we’re going to hear many of these familiar passages now with the original Gnostic translations, the original Koine Greek in them, and see if those subtle differences make a difference in what the Gospels say and mean. So here’s Brother Nathan.Cyd:You know, in the Tripartite Tractate, it is unique in that the Aeon who fell is not Sophia, but Logos. And so, because that is the book that I resonate to, I’m always talking about Logos. And it seems to me, Bishop, this is a question for you—I’ve always thought that making the Aeon who fell a female character is just another way of demonizing, in the bad sense of the word, of maligning women. To say that the Aeon who fell had this, you know, illegitimate child, and here we have the fallen world. This doesn’t seem right to me. What do you think of that? So I prefer Logos because it’s just a neutral Logos.Bishop Nathan Wilson:Well, I think some of it was to rip on to women as well, but I think a lot of it comes from a misunderstanding of Simon Magus and then also with some with the Logos in a sense, I don’t mind it, but I’ll see that as another Gnostic interpretation. I go back to the original idea and I reckon this is where the misidentification of the full and feminine comes from, and it’s from Simon Magus’ work of the Great Declaration. We don’t have the original, we only have the quotations by the Church Fathers.So that’s the only text we know for 100% that was written by someone who actually knew the disciples and was baptized by them. We don’t have any other text we can guarantee that for a fact. So the Catholics wanted to burn that before, well, they made sure to whinge about it before burning it. So it’s lucky they whinged about it, otherwise we wouldn’t have access to it at all. And it mentions about the feminine falling in a sense, but not what people think it is. It meaning that feminine aspect is the qualities of life basically. So meaning that this life we see now is a fallen state.So what that really is meaning is that the feminine aspect of God is the birthing of creation and it’s the creation of that birth that has fallen. So that’s very different and that’s the first thought, so the very first form comes from the female. So that’s the first physical form coming from the feminine mind of God basically. So it’s not that God’s fallen or any part of divine or divinity is falling, but rather how we live in this material world that’s fallen. So we’ve strayed from our divine purpose basically is what Simon is stating. So he states that there’s the mental mind of the universe. So what he’s talking about is also the Father being basically the seed, the forethought of all things and the Mother is the feminine power of the creation. So what births, what you can touch and see, experience around you, while the Father is the spirit what you can’t see.So it’s very interesting. So you have a God beyond sex. So that’s what Simon is describing and he also believed in a demiurge, but he believed it was Yahweh. He believed that Yahweh was the leader of the fallen angels, but he believed that he was the creator of this material world and that the spiritual Father created the spiritual world.But I think he [Simon Magus] misunderstood the disciples and Jesus as well. I think he carried on his own teaching. He was still accepted by the disciples, but I think he was slightly confused. When I was looking at the text, I don’t think Jesus believed that this world was created by the devil, but rather the devil ruled it—so what corrupted this world, so what led it away from God. So rather what he’s [Jesus] speaking about is heaven within and returning to God. So that meaning of repentance is to change your mind, change the inner human, change within and return to God. So that’s all what it obviously all really means. So he’s speaking about heaven within, finding God within and returning to God and that the archon of this world is falling.And I’ll read that as well from some of the text as well. So we can go into some of those. I was going to let you choose what you’d like me to choose from first. I can also go into the original gospel of John, so I can go into the feminine aspect there.Cyd:That’s very good. Yeah. Whatever you’d like to share. This is great.Bishop Nathan Wilson:Okay. And then after that, I’ll mention about the archon of the world and I can go into where some of the texts of Sophia, where gnosis is also mentioned, because sometimes we have Jesus having gnosis and understanding what everyone’s thinking around him, which has also been hidden, they want you to see anything to do with that.But if you go to the gospel of John, for instance, in the beginning, and this is what I kept because it’s been obviously censored and this is a Carpocration belief. So they believed in Theos being the Monad and Logos being the Word of God, and that was basically being Jesus, and they believed in Zoe—so that was their Sophia. So, and you see this mentioned “In the beginning.” So in chapter one, 1:1 to 1:4,“In the beginning, there was Logos and Logos was to God and Logos was God. This one was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him. And without him, not one thing was made. With him was Zoe and the Zoe was a light of mankind.”So men, so whenever you see men, it is actually mankind, not just men in general. No.Cyd:So the feminine humanity, I use the word humanity.Bishop Nathan Wilson:Yes. It’s much better. It’s much better.So I found it interesting. So as a divine feminine, that’s the light of all mankind—of humanity. And that’s fascinating.Cyd:So the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, you, you translate as Sophia?Bishop Nathan Wilson:Yes. Sophia and Zoe, I’ll put that as well. It’s usually referenced to, but I like the word Sophia.Cyd:What we generally think of as the Holy Spirit. See, I think of the Holy Spirit as the, well, the Tripartite Tractate has first order of powers being the Aeons in the Fullness that we’re the second order of powers. And the third order of powers is the “Army of Christ” that came after—that’s that Pentecost kind of indwelling. You know, when you accept, when you move your ego away and you accept the Christ, that is the third order of powers coming in. But it’s the first order of powers I think of as the original Holy Spirit, when the Christians think of Holy Spirit. And that I think is what you’re calling Sophia is the Fullness of God.Bishop Nathan Wilson:Yes. So what brings you to God basically as well, that divine presence you experienced within yourself or what gives you the divine spiritual baptism. I feel very much like that.I also liked The Wisdom of Solomon where it says that Sophia is the emanation of God, the life giving spirit. And that’s beautiful as well. So what makes humans friends of humans and prophets, friends of God, which is being mentioned in that very old text and that’s before Jesus time and Christians adored that text. It’s very, very Gnostic. So it’s the text that mentions basically a Messiah will call himself a child of God and a son of God. And he will be put to death in a shameful way. So very much adored by Christians and rejected by Jews. And then later on rejected by Protestants because it was just too Gnostic. They don’t want anything basically.So, but that’s a very, very Gnostic element being at the start. And you see that being the Carpocratian Trinity. So their Trinity was the Logos and Monad and Zoe.And we also had very much a lot of female members within the Carpocratian sects, such as Marcellina, who ran her own Carpocratian movement, who was married or a lover to the founder, Carpocrates. And her idea was a little bit different as well. And she very much embraced a divine feminine and she was invited to Rome during Pope Antigonus, Pope Anicetus, sorry, becoming Pope. So very interesting. So she was actually invited to Rome because of her popularity. So fascinating. So I also like Helen, so, the wife of Simon Magus. Very fascinating figure.So I’ll go into some things as well. And I’ll mention some things about the Archon being mentioned. So I’ll go into John 12:31 and then 14:30 and 16:11 I can go into, which is just all in John, which is same gospel, basically. And it’s just regarding about the Archon being cast out by a very, very Gnostic element, which I chose to keep because it’s not going to keep this word in any English translations because they’re going to think how these guys are going to know about Gnosticism, can’t have that. But I kept it.So this is 12:31. So this is after Jesus answering,“Now is the judgment of this world. Now is the Archon of this world cast out.”So that’s interesting. So meaning the ruler of this world. And he also says, “Who’s the ruler of this world?” He’s stating that who’s the Archon of this world. So that’s the devil he’s speaking about. That’s Gnostic that they’re using. So that again is a very ancient term that they don’t want people to see.Cyd:Is it the same as the Demiurge?Bishop Nathan Wilson:Yes. So this is the ruling Demiurge, the Archon, basically. So the head ruling Archons, an Archon of Archons, basically.So when we look at the belief of the Demiurge, it was a lieutenant of sorts. So leading up of other fallen powers or leading lesser powers, depending on the theology of what Demiurge is and what you’re looking at, because it would extend to different groups.Go to 14:30. And we have here,“I will not speak with you much longer for the Archon of this world is coming. He has no hold on me.”So that’s clearly Jesus saying he’s not worshiping this God. It has no hold on him.It has no power over him. So he’s not this God. So he’s not the God of this world.So very, very mystic. So we didn’t have this belief within the Pharisees. They would have opposed Jesus as a heretic, which they did. They see him as blasphemous. And when we look at early Christianity, it was a Jewish heresy. So a Gnostic heresy, which is beautiful.And then we have 16:11.“And in regard to judgment, because the Archon of this world now stands condemned.”So that’s fascinating. So we have very much very Gnostic elements here. But it’s not just restricted to a demonic being, though. We have in the Gospel of Mark, for instance, which we have the Archon of Gentiles, and that’s in 10:42. So Archon can just mean a political ruler, as well as a ruler or a spiritual ruler. So it depends on the context of use being used. So I kept this here to show that it’s not always necessarily a bad thing. But again, depending on how the word’s being used. So in the Gospel of Mark we have the Archon of this world being mentioned.“And having summoned them, Jesus says to them, you have seen that the Archons of the Gentiles rule over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.”So the Archon of the Gentiles, meaning the Archon of those who are not Jewish.So non-Jewish rulers. Right.Basically, so that’s all it is. We have the Archon, an Archon’s daughter being healed. So that’s also interesting. So now we’re having a politician who’s not Jewish, and he has a daughter, and she’s being healed by Jesus. So these words are definitely being mentioned. So the Archon of Gentiles and Archon of daimons as well, that’s in 9:34 of Matthew. So I’ll bring up that stage too, and then we can move into where Sophia is mentioned, which is very beautiful. I definitely was excited when I found Sophia found in the New Testament. So I was surprised. I was like, wow. Archon of daimons is what I want. So that’s, oh, you can also find it in Mark as well. So that’s good. I can go back to Mark at the very beginning. Oh, I didn’t know that. 3:22 of Mark:“And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said that he has Beelzebub and that he cast out daimons with the Archon of daimons.”So that’s interesting there too. So he’s saying this is from the scribes. So this would be from Pharisees. They’re saying that he’s using pagan gods to cast out other pagan gods, but they didn’t believe that these pagan gods were actually a physical adversary against God, but rather law forces that were used by God. So God was the creator of evil and goodness, light and darkness. That was a Pharisee belief. So some Essenes believe that too. Some Essenes believe that God created both light and darkness, but only to destroy darkness, which is a bit different.Cyd:We believe that the God Above All Gods is all good. He did not create darkness. The darkness comes from this material world.Bishop Nathan Wilson:Yes, that’s a very interesting case. So that’s fantastic. So that’s something that a lot of people don’t take into account as well.So the God that Jesus is speaking of is a perfect being that’s denying sacrifice, that’s also denying harm of children as well. So when you look at the first Christians, they’re also rescuing children from pagan brothels as well as Christians that would go out into the wilderness, rescuing children that were left to die by their pagan parents because they were unwanted. So back in Rome and Greece, a man had charge of his family and could choose to get rid of his children or marry them off as well as even send them to temple orphanages, not temple orphanages, sorry, becoming temple prostitutes, I was meant to say, or send them off to temples, basically—become priests. So the father had full right of their children. They were in charge. So Christians didn’t like that.And so they rescued these children. That’s fantastic. So Christianity was very different and they wanted to be like Jesus in that case. So that’s fascinating too, because he was stating that the children are innocent. But I’ll give something also I mentioned, say in the temple scene where you have the doves being auctioned off and Jesus basically saving these doves, we have the Gospel of James mentioning the Virgin Mary as a dove and a temple priestess or sorry, basically a temple virgin. So she was given to the temple at the ages of three, raised there into 14 and given to Joseph.Cyd:Where was this? Where did you get that from?Bishop Nathan Wilson:That’s from the Gospel of James and also from church father writings. So you see, because I believe other church fathers wrote down that the Virgin Mary was a temple virgin. So these temple virgins were from the line of David. They were believed to give birth to the Messiah. They were married to the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Sadducees didn’t believe in the Messiah. They just viewed these girls as sacred coming from the line of David or from the Hasmoneandynasty. The Pharisees believed that these girls would give birth to a Messiah. The Herodians did too, the ones who supported that. So very fascinating when you look at that.So that meaning if you change that text around where Jesus is calling the saying that the priests are turning this temple into a spēlaion, being a den or grotto for lēstai, being pirates, predators or rebels or revolutionary fighters and guerrilla fighters. So we have the children crying for help Hosanna. So the word krazō, crying out help Hosanna, meaning to save us. So these are shouting out to Jesus, Save us, Jesus. Then the dove’s being sold.So that’s something that people don’t take into account. So the first Christians that are saving children are trying to copy Jesus saving children. So it’s a horrible tradition that was going on. So the temple veil that split during Jesus’ crucifixion, that was woven by 80 temple virgins. So three to 14 year olds. So when people were being married back then, they were quite young.So we have the demanding of virgins being forced into marriages in the gospel. So in numbers 31:32-35. So that’s Yahweh demanding the harm of children. That’s very evil. So we see Jesus challenging this God saying that this God’s the devil. So when we look at the actions of the past, we understand a bit of things.I’ll quickly read about some things about Sophia as well. And this in the Gospel of Mark. Later on, I’ll read that temple scene for you too. But I also have in here the Gospel of James and it mentions about Mary being given to the temple and being a dove in the temple receiving nourishment from the hand or translates to from a power of the angels. Fascinating. Jumping to Matthew for 6:2. This is we have Sophia being mentioned. We have Sophia found in Mark and Matthew.I’ve got Mark, which is the original text. I better go on to Mark first. So that’s 6:2. Mark is considered the oldest canonical text, but we have older texts of Mark. So the Greek Gospel of Thomas, for instance, that’s much older. We have that actually actively being mentioned in the first century as the Logia of Yesu. So before it was called the Gospel of Thomas, it was just called the Sayings of Jesus.And so I personally believe that’s the oldest gospel that we have, which they don’t like to admit that. So I think that’s what they talk about being Q source. So Q source is just going to be Sayings of Jesus. The only gospel that’s like that is the Gospel of Thomas. So a cornerstone of the church.So this is in the Gospel of Mark 6:2:“And on the Sabbath day, he began to teach in the synagogue and many heard him were amazed, saying, when did this man learn these things? And what is this Sophia that has been given to him and the powers?Or it can translate to miracles that are done by his hand.So that’s kind of trippy. So they’re asking, who is this Sophia? Because the Pharisees didn’t believe in Sophia. They didn’t believe in a feminine Holy Spirit. They believed it was just the spirit within that guide us to God. But rather, the Gnostic approach is that’s the feminine aspect of God entering into us, basically. So that’s a very Gnostic understanding, a mystic understanding.And some of them also viewed, say, the Mother Earth being the physical emanation of God, being feminine as well. So we have very different beliefs in these ancient pasts. And we see that in, I think it’s the Gospel of the Ebionites or the Gospel of Nazarenes. But that’s being mentioned in an ancient Jewish Christian source. We don’t have the original text. We just have a quotation from the church fathers because they’re the ones who had the text before destroying it, which is very unfortunate.So then we have the Gospel of Matthew in 11:19. And this one’s beautiful. I actually very much like this translation because it’s mentioning about Sophia being justified by her works. So I wanted to keep this for sure. So we do see Sophia being mentioned and most people don’t know this. And it’s a shame it’s been denied to us because the church is very anti-female, which does no justice because the early Christians had many female leaders. The first to witness the resurrection story is Mary Magdalene. So it’s always been centered around women, which is such a shame that they have been ultimately removed from this story because it was not the case. Jesus would be quite upset with that.“The Appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene” by Alexander Ivanov, 1834-1836. / Wikimedia Commons.So 11:19 I need. So I’m 11:9. All right.“The son of man came eating and drinking. They say, behold, a man eats a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. And Sophia was justified by her works.”Again, we have Jesus now mentioning Sophia.Cyd:Mm hmm. What book was that in? Was that Mark?Bishop Nathan Wilson:That one there is Matthew 11:19. And we also have 12:42, which mentions the Sophia of Solomon, so the Wisdom of Solomon, which also have a text called this to the Wisdom of Solomon. And I think that was personally read by Jesus. I believe he read this text. And I certainly see the first Christians adoring it for this reason. So I think that I think Jesus went out of his way to fulfill certain prophecies, such as the donkey going into the city like the Messiah’s mentioned. So he wasn’t silly. And I think he was reading this text. And that’s why you see the crucifixion. I don’t think he was personally going out of his way to be killed. I think it was another option and he accepted his fate and knew that it could happen. And he accepted it.So I think that he believed in these prophecies as well. I see that he was a Jewish man. He was a human being that became the Christ that was filled with Gnosis. So I’m big on him becoming Logos, which is my theology in a sense. I go by an old Christian term with that. I love the term Logos being God’s word or authority or song or speech, because we did have also some that believed that God sung the world into existence or the universe as well. So that’s a very ancient belief, too.So 12:42:“The Queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the end of the earth to hear the Sophia of Solomon and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.”So beautiful again—Sophia is mentioned. And the last one I wrote down is Matthew 13:54 for Sophia. And then I put a couple of times for Gnosis and I put a couple of times for Magus, because I like Magus being mentioned because of Simon Magus. I think he’s also a way of understanding Christianity as well.Cyd:Where do we find Simon Magus if somebody wants to go and read him?Bishop Nathan Wilson:Well, Simon Magus, he is mentioned in the book of Acts. So they mostly use him to condemn him as trying to buy the Holy Spirit. And then he repents and he’s forgiven basically. That’s the end of the text. It’s not really bad what they’re saying. Paul sent money to the brother of Jesus. But the thing is, the earliest text of that story ends at Simon being baptized. So what we’re reading is a later add in. So they didn’t want the story to end at that. [Early Christian writings keep Simon Magus separate from Jesus’ family, though later writers sometimes blended the many Simons.]It’s like, we can’t have these guys saying that their founder, who we call a heretic, was baptized by the disciples and leave it at that, you know, so they were quite upset. And they also called him worse than Satan. They said that he was associated with a prostitute. And the worst thing is that he saved this prostitute, which they want to call her, who was Helen, who became second in charge of the Christian movement. So she was forced into this. She wasn’t just… didn’t want to choose to this life. So she was forced to sex slavery, possibly quite young, possibly born into it. And come Simon saves her, the two fall in love. So they marry. That’s fascinating. So she fell in love with the man who rescued her. This is not some scandal. This is pure romance and love. And he’s seen her as an expression of God. So he’s seen the expression of the divine feminine in her.So she in turn helped develop his faith and bring closer into his faith and hers. So these two went throughout Rome rescuing others. So they would have been rescuing children, something that the Catholic Church never has done. So which is quite a big shame.Cyd:So where can we read about this? I’m just wondering.Bishop Nathan Wilson:If we look at Church of the Apostles, they mentioned about the first Christians rescuing children. And then we mentioned about Romans viewing them taking children as strange because they didn’t see human beings in the child. So they were told not to be too attached to the child because children died quite often, especially in infant mortality rate was quite high. And so was women that died in childbirth. So they were told not to be too attached. So if the child was misshapen or sickly, they left it out to die.So the Christians that were rescuing these children during the first century, the Catholic Church didn’t exist back then. So you’re going to have to think about who these Christians were. It’s not going to name them. It’s just going to tell you they were Christians and Jewish Christians. So who are these Christians? They’re Gnostic Christians. They’re the only ones that existed at this time because the Catholic Church wasn’t around then. They came later. So even when we have, I forget his name now, he was a Greek opponent against Christianity. I always forget his name and mix them up. And no, it’s not Arius, that was a Christian. He was the founder of the Aryan Christians. I forget his name. But there was a Greek opponent of Christianity and he mentions the Christians of his time. He doesn’t mention the Catholic Church because they didn’t exist yet. He was mentioning Gnostic Christians and Jewish Christians. He said that he basically said that they cannibalized their God, which has taken the Eucharist, and that there are different versions of them and they disagree with each other. So he didn’t like that. So he thought that was weird. So he thought that what a religion that can’t even get along with each other basically or can’t agree. So he mocked him for that.So he didn’t know any better. So we have to look at those early Christians, who they were. Then we understand what’s going on. Then we understand with the Gnostic Christians, viewing children as innocent and also viewing women as something special, being the feminine aspect of God in human flesh as we’re created in God’s image, male and female. So the soul as well, that returning to God through the expression of the divine feminine, through the expression of divine masculine. So our inner human, that inner child returning to God. So again, that inner child is also being mentioned too. So they’re viewing that as also as the children with innocence, the innocence within. So they’re connecting all this together.So they’re wanting to be like Christ, so Christ-like. So they’re just following the teachings of their master. So it’s fascinating.It’s like when you mentioned some propaganda against the Gnostics when regarding to the Catholic Church, the thing was that these Christians are trying to be like Jesus. So we have to take that into account. So meaning that these Catholic opponents are just writing propaganda against them.So it’s like the Ophites that they say that were eating bread that had semen in it. That was just pure propaganda because these Christians were actually trying to be like Jesus and they wouldn’t be doing this in other words. So they didn’t like that. They also didn’t like that some Gnostics were open to people being homosexual. They didn’t mind gay people or lesbians. Some Gnostics didn’t agree with it though, but there were some that welcomed everyone and the Catholic Church hated that.So there was even the church group or a Christian community called the Adamites. The Catholics did not like them. They were Christian nudists. They were in the second century and they were two sects. They both attempted to live like Adam and Eve. It’s just that one took one sex partner only. They didn’t believe in marriage. They believed marriage came after sin. So they lived naked in the woods attempting to live like Adam and Eve in the community with one sex partner. But others had orgies and were having sex with each other. The Catholics killed them. So they didn’t like it. They called them heretics and they existed, I believe, all the way up to the fourth or sixth century. So they existed for a little bit. So they hung on for a little bit.So I owe the power to them, which isn’t too bad as well. So I admire them for that. I personally don’t think they would have kept going because they were always driven off into the underground. I think they would have had a lot of trouble in the winter being naked. That’s just my personal thing. I don’t know how they handle it. So I think you need some sort of clothing or at least shelter to be able to survive that. They need a lot of warmth.So I’ll go on to some times that we have Gnosis being mentioned too as well. I can go on to Mark first in 8:7. Then I can go on to say that temple scene or I can read that scene from an unknown gospel with the pigs jumping into water that the Pharisees baptize into, which is trippy text. It’s pretty cool.Well, there we have part three of my interview with Bishop Nathan Wilson of the Gnostic Union. We’ll finish it off next week. I hope you’re enjoying this foray into the history of the words that were chosen for the New Testament, and how so many of those words were Gnostic words, and you don’t get that flavor in all of our Latin-derived New Testament translations.So, this is the unique gift that Brother Nathan has given us. I’ll give more of my own thoughts next week, after we’ve concluded with our interview, because I don’t necessarily agree with everything Brother Nathan is saying, but I see his points, and God bless him for doing it.So, until next week, God bless us all, and onward and upward.If you are mining your gnosis here at Gnostic Insights, please contribute to the work so we can continue to help all that we can. Thank you!The Gnostic Reformation is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading The Gnostic Reformation! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://cydropp.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2">cydropp.substack.com/subscribe</a>

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What is Gnostic Reformation, Clear and Simple?: Most of the gnosis presented here comes from the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi codices. My retelling of the mythos is just good news for modern man. It is not hermetic; it is not a translation of wisdom from an Egyptian God. It is not New Age. This Gnostic Gospel is simply the story of who we are and where we come from.

The gnosis I am sharing here honors God the Father and, as you begin to remember this inherent truth, you will experience a more joyful life. When we use our free will to remember our true inheritance, the god of this fallen universe loses its power to control us. When we turn our eyes upward to the Father--the God Above All Gods--we are freed from the burdens of this world.

Once you begin to remember that you are truly loved by our heavenly Father, you will suffer less. When you begin to walk with virtue rather than embracing vice, you will be happier; you will be joyful. Not all of the time. Bad things do happen. But suffering as a response to life’s challenges is unnecessary. We are living in a fallen world, and that, I suppose, is another gnostic heresy. For some reason, modern Christians want to insist that this world is blessed by God and is blessedly perfect. But we all know this world we live in isn’t perfect and when you deny that fact you become unduly frustrated and sad, even to the point of depression. Pharmaceuticals are not the solution--gnosis is.

Gnosis means knowing. This sort of knowing is not related to book learning. Gnosis refers to remembering what you already know. The point of spiritual study is not to learn new things but to mine what you already possess deep inside of you. When you study new ideas, you must continually weigh the information you are taking in against your own discernment. The purpose of this podcast is not so much to teach you about Gnosticism; the purpose is to stimulate your own innate gnosis. And there is really only one gnosis that matters in the end—remembering the Father, your cosmic origin, and the purpose of being alive. <a href="https://cydropp.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">cydropp.substack.com</a>
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