Audio Version

Gnosticism is a collection of religious ideas and systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. – Wikipedia

The Bible is a Book of spiritual knowledge, the definition of gnosis. To help us make sense of the strange gnostic teachings that sprang up after Jesus’ time, we are going to look at what the Bible has to teach us.

The Bible begins with the creation of heaven and earth (Genesis 1:1). The word genesis means creation. The God of Genesis is the God of Creation. Everything that God made was good— “And God saw that it was good.”  So the material world (real things, rather than ideas and beliefs) is good. The evil is in the ideas and beliefs that are in error, the definition of sin. God did not form evil. God created evil, the idea of evil, like the idea of heaven and earth, which had yet to be formed as we see in the following verse. This allowed for freewill. The freedom to choose between two opposing thoughts. God said they would die if they ate of fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden (Genesis 3:3). The serpent said they would not die (Genesis 3:4). They chose the latter, disobeying God’s word.

“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”   Religion, born of spiritual disobedience, is responsible for bringing another God into existence.  The children of Israel disobeyed God’s Commandment by worshipping the gold calf, placing themselves under the law instituted by the tribe of Levi, under which there was no mercy. The God of Leviticus is the God of Religion. The God of Destruction. Look at all of the death and destruction that takes place in the name of religion. The “other gods” we worship symbolize our false religious and personal beliefs, evil gods, merciless and cruel, which oppress and limit us in life, bringing pain and sorrow into our life.

Our false beliefs are what the prophet Jeremiah calls “man’s word,” which he prophesies will be man’s burden (23:36). God’s creation was made through God’s word— “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.” Genesis 1:3,4.  Man’s creation was made through man’s word. “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness…” Isaiah 5:20, the word woe meaning misery, grief.  We called evil good, putting darkness for light by mistaking lies for truth, forming an unholy creation called “the first heaven and the first earth,” which passes away upon the creation of “a new heaven and a new earth.”  To form this holy creation will require us to follow God’s instruction by dividing the light from the darkness— the truth from the lies. It will require us to follow the instruction of Jesus by engaging in an internal judgment, through which we overcome our false beliefs, which is called “the regeneration” (Matthew 19:28), the act of regenerating, which is to form anew, the outcome of which will be joy instead of pain and sorrow.  “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” Revelation 21:4

Gnosticism claims that the fall in the garden didn’t occur through Adam and Eve— it happened before the world’s creation, through a mistake made by a heavenly being called Sophia. We want to be very careful with our interpretation of these gnostic teachings. We don’t want to deny responsibility for the fall, symbolizing the spiritual decline of mankind, which we all played a part in. The story of Sophia’s fall is told slightly differently in the many Gnostic texts that discuss it, but they all share the basics in common. God the Father gave rise to a host of spiritual beings, aeons, who populated Heaven, which the Gnostics called the Pleroma: a state of perfect fullness, especially of God’s being. Along with a divine Mother and Christ. One of the last of these beings to emanate from the Father, Sophia, gave birth to a new being on her own, without the involvement of her partner or the approval of the Father. The being born under such circumstances was nothing like the perfect inhabitants of the Pleroma; instead, he was ignorant and malevolent. This was the demiurge, whom the Gnostics identified with the god of the Old Testament. He created the material world to mirror his own wicked personality and trapped sparks of divinity, fragments of the Pleroma, within humans. It was then up to Christ to awaken humans to their true nature and liberate them from the world. Sophia is a feminine figure, similar to the human soul, one of the feminine aspects of God.
(read more @ gnosticismexplained.org)

The definition of aeon is a divine power or nature emanating from the Supreme Being and playing various roles in the operation of the universe. So these aeons carry this divine power. That was the state of Adam and Eve before they ate of the evil; before they accepted the false belief. They were spiritual beings, wrapped in a glorified type of flesh body, which allowed them to interact with and enjoy the physical realm. The “coats of skins” they received because of spiritual disobedience were not animal skins (as religion teaches), but physical flesh bodies, which limited them to the physical realm. This was Adam and Eve’s fall from the spiritual realm called Heaven to the physical realm called Earth. The fall was from spiritual to physical, so how could the fall have taken place before the physical world came into existence?

Like Adam and Eve, we received a spiritual flesh body through spiritual disobedience; by eating of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, which is to accept the false belief in our heart, which formed this sinful flesh body inside of our physical flesh body. What is this divine power called aeon?  It is the two divine attributes of the Creator; the two things needed for Creation. God’s Spirit and God’s word— “And the Spirit of God moved… And God said,…” Genesis 1:2, 3.  Being made in the spiritual image of God, we carried this divine power. But in the process of time, we replaced God’s Spirit and word with our own spirit and word, replacing love with fear and truth with lies.

To restore this divine power from within, will take the activation of God’s Spirit, the instruction for which is given to us by Moses, symbolizing the Spirit of God— “Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord…” Exodus 14:13, the word still meaning be silent, quiet self. And by John, through the revelation of Jesus, symbolizing the word of God— “And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for the space of half an hour.” Revelation 8:1. There is silence in heaven when the seventh seal is opened because silence in heaven, symbolizing silence in the mind, opens the seventh seal, which in the language of the east, is the seventh chakra, through which we connect with the divine source. The holy spirit will deliver truth to our heart IF we stop resisting it. With each false belief we remove through truth, we remove a layer of this invisible flesh that has been formed within us— a process through which we become spiritual beings (aeons) with respect to our spiritual essence.

Along with the creation of the aeons, was the creation of the Mother and Christ. That is because christ is the divine power that works through our spiritual mother to restore the divine power to the perfect state in which we received it at birth. That is going to take spiritual works; the works of a new creation, which comes into existence when we conceive of truth in that spiritual mother called the heart through the christ power. Our spiritual Mother has a name. She is called Jerusalem. The Mother of gnosticism is called Barbēlō, often referred to as ‘Mother-Father.’ She is the divine Mother that is in the image of the Father. Sounds confusing, yet no more confusing than the teachings of another Mother— the Catholic Church, who refers to Mary as “the Mother of God,” which adopted the “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit” doctrine, legitimized by the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD.

Add to that the mistranslation of John 1:1, in which “a god was the word” has been changed to “the Word was God.”  The Son is not the Father. Nor is the Holy Spirit the Father. The three are not one. The three are of one— a man sows his seed by his energy. God the Father sows His seed by His Holy Spirit (male) into the Mother (female), which produces a son (a god). The seed is the word of God (Luke 8:11). When God spoke His word (Genesis 1:3), it was the sowing of God’s seed into Mother Earth. Just as God sowed His seed through His holy Spirit into Mother Mary. And as God, through holy spirit, will sow spiritual seed, in that spiritual Mother or Earth called the Heart, IF we don’t resist it! The spiritual seed of God is truth, which Jesus personified.

The Bible speaks of two fathers: the Father of truth and the father of a lie. “Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me…“Ye are of your father the devil… He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” John 8:42, 44. If God were our Father, we would love truth. Two fathers, sowing two very different seeds (truth and lie) by two very different energies (love and fear)— the Father that sows good seed through the power called christ and the father that sows evil seed through the power called antichrist. Two sons, the son of creation, and the son of perdition, which means utter ruin or destruction. Two mothers, the mother that is in bondage and the mother that is free. “For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.” Galatians 4:25, 26.

The word Barbēlō (the mother of gnosticism) means son of tribute, the word bar meaning son (as the heir to the throne), and belo meaning tribute, which means a burden, forced labor, from the prime root, bâlâh, meaning to fail, wear out, decay, similar to bâla, the prime root of bela, meaning ruin, destruction, sharing the same meaning as the word perdition, as in “the son of perdition.” Which son has mankind chosen to inherit that spiritual throne called the heart?  Some gnostic texts refer to Barbelo as the Mother of Christ. However, Christ is not a person, christ is the healing power that works in a person who has experienced a spiritual intercourse or communication with this power that works through the heart when the power of the mind is silenced. The outcome of this union is the healing or salvation of the soul. 

Sophia, an analogy to the soul, gave birth to a new being on her own, without the involvement of her partner or the approval of the Father. Like Sophia, we gave birth to a new being, or rather a new [state of] being through a creation that God the Father did not approve of, as it was not formed according to His instruction. This unholy creation (as previously mentioned) is called “the first heaven and the first earth,” which we began forming early on in life, just past the age of four (according to the biblical text). Heaven symbolizes the mind and the earth symbolizes the heart, aspects of the soul, which due to their compromised state, are in need of healing. Sophia gave birth to this new being without the involvement of her partner, as we conceived of, and gave birth to this first creation without the involvement of our one true spiritual husband. “The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, thou hast well said, I have no husband: For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband…” John 4:17, 18.  Our one true spiritual husband is truth, the seed or word of God— the spiritual Jesus. It is truth that heals or saves the soul, transforming the soul (the mind and heart) from an impure to a pure state. “Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.” Matthew 23:26. If we purify the thoughts of our mind and the emotions of our heart (by way of the christ power), our actions will be pure. Thought, emotion, and action— the three aspects of the soul. The [state of] being born as a result of this unholy creation is nothing like the [state of] being born as a result of a holy creation. Man’s unholy creation has him living in a world of chaos, confusion, unrest, death, and destruction.

“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away… And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” Revelation 21:1-4. The new Jerusalem symbolizes a new peaceful state of being, the word Jerusalem meaning founded peaceful. Coming down from God out of heaven reveals that it is spiritual— a peaceful state that must be established within before it can come into existence from without. “I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together: Whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the LORD. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.” For there are set thrones of judgment, the thrones of the house of David. Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. For my brethren and companions’ sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee.” Psalms 122.  At the start of the new millennium, the world made a transition— from the “era of Isaac” to the “era of Jacob;” the era of Spirit, and of spiritual awakening. Now, the only way to effect positive change in our external world is to bring about positive change in our internal world through a new creation. As it was “up to Christ to awaken humans to their true nature and liberate them from the world,” it is up to humans to awaken the christ power, through which we will form “a new heaven and a new earth,” symbolizing “a new mind and a new heart,” restoring our true spiritual nature, while liberating ourselves from a world of suffering.

According to gnosticism, Sophia, meaning Wisdom, is a feminine figure, similar to the human soul, one of the feminine aspects of God. The soul is the vital principle in man credited to the faculty of thought, emotion, and action. Mind, heart, and body— the trinity of the soul. Knowledge is of the mind. Understanding is of the heart. Wisdom is of the body— the action we apply to the spiritual understanding of spiritual knowledge, which leads to a true spiritual experience, the true meaning of gnosis. The soul, and the flesh body that it is housed in, is female. “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… male and female created he them.”Genesis 1:26, 27, the “our” refers to the two attributes of God— Spirit and word (Energy and seed), which are male. We were literally made when our father, by his energy, sowed his seed, into our mother, who made our flesh body— “made of a woman, made under the law.” Galatians 4:4. The “male and female” that God created were Adam and Eve. But there is also the “male and female” within us. “Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.”  Genesis 5:2.   We are spiritually male and female. We are male in that we have the ability to sow spiritual seed by spiritual energy. We are female in that we serve as the habitat for this seed and energy. What is born of this union depends on what type of energized seed was conceived in that spiritual mother called the heart. But does God have feminine aspects as suggested by gnostics?  An aspect would be a characteristic that describes God. We have a flesh body.  Flesh is female. God is Spirit. “No man hath seen God at any time…” John 1:18.  God has no flesh. Therefore, God is not female. Being made in the image of God refers to the spiritual image of God, which is male— the Spirit and Word of God, which Moses and Aaron, Joshua and Caleb, Elijah and Elisha, John and Jesus (all males) personified. There is no God the Mother. “Heavenly Father and Earthly Mother, Spiritual Sun and Holy Spirit,” an invocation of the Sophian tradition, is more on point. The Heart is the Mother, which conceives of the word of truth through the power of the holy Spirit—  the two aspects of the Father.  Seed is sowed in the Earth, symbolizing the Heart.

Adam represents a pure spiritual state of being— the state in which we enter this world. God’s Spirit is Love and God’s word is truth. They say “the eyes are the window to the soul,” which is why we feel love when we look into the eyes of a newborn. They also say, “if you want to know the truth, ask a child.” A child is incapable of telling a lie until he learns fear, which leads to doubt, which the serpent used to get Eve to accept the lie.  Eve symbolizes the Mind, which upon taking in the lie, becomes confused. This is why the God of Genesis does not want us to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve have already eaten of the good, having a positive experience. But to eat of the good and the evil is to have the knowledge of both, to experience the negative consequence of accepting the evil, the word serpent meaning to learn by experience.   We gave birth to Cain when we took in our first lie, Abel symbolizing the righteous truth we slayed or rendered unconscious through the many lies we would speak in the realm of our mind— in the kingdom of heaven. Seth is “the reappointed seed” (a teaching of the first revelation). Jesus was the reappointed seed personified— the second Adam. Just as one became the seed of Abraham through physical baptism in the previous era, one can become the seed of Seth in the present era through spiritual baptism, which is to be immersed in truth, through which one becomes the “last Adam,” a quickening spirit, the word quickening meaning to (re-)vitalize, make alive, give life. To resurrect or give life to the truth preserved in the subconscious we must enter the realm of the Heart— entering the kingdom of God. 

When Jesus arrived on earth, it was all about the intellect, the ability of the human mind to reach correct conclusions, determining what is true and what is false. Religion served as the intellect, determining what is right and what is wrong, which the people were in favor of because it kept them from having to battle with these decisions themselves (1 Samuel 8:19 20). Samuel means heard of God, the voice of God, the children of Israel experiencing direct communication with God through Samuel, which they rejected in favor of a king named Saul. Samuel was the type and shadow. Jesus, the word of God, was the reality. The people received direct communication with God through Jesus, who spoke for God, sharing the spiritual knowledge (gnosis), which was rejected by the Jews, taking root in early Christians, only to be usurped by a self-proclaimed teacher of the Gospel of Christ named Saul. 

It is clear from reading some of the gnostic texts, which emerged during the end of the second century, that spiritual truth had survived to some extent. But you can also tell that spiritual truth, which is of the heart, and comes by revelation, has been compromised by the musings of the mind. While entertaining for some, and feeding the egos of those attempting to interpret them (as Saul, aka Paul, attempted to interpret the spiritual teachings of Jesus), are downright confusing. “God is not the author of confusion” (1 Corinthians 14:33), spoken by the one who caused the confusion by mixing carnal law with spiritual truth; mixing milk with meat, which is unlawful. “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.” 1 Corinthians 14:34. The woman being subject to the man is a spiritual law, of which the carnal law was a figure— the flesh is to be subject to the inner being. Clearly, Paul was not spiritually minded. Paul was religiously minded, in which the woman holds a lower position than the man. Unlike Jesus, who placed Mary Magdalene in a higher position, which he demonstrated through his love for her, and which she demonstrated towards him through her love of truth. The Feminine, which has been missing from the equation since the time of Mary Magdalene, plays the most important role in the salvation of the soul. She represents the Heart, out of which Jesus cast the seven devils, symbolizing the spiritual impurities of the heart (Matthew 15:19), which is the salvation of the soul. It is time to make the transition from the Mind to the Heart; from Religion to Spirituality. The cause of all of our suffering is due to the bypassing of the Heart— the only place from which we can transform ourselves, and the material world.

There is no Elijah coming to sit at the table. No Jesus coming in the clouds. No Mothership coming from Planet-X. There is no salvation coming from without. I believe what we have in some of these gnostic writings is the mixing of spiritual truth with religious iniquity. Just as we must separate the esoteric teachings of Jesus from the exoteric teachings of Paul, we must separate the wheat from the tares when it comes to these gnostic writings, the wheat symbolizing the spiritual truth we can glean from them, the tares symbolizing the error in them.  For example, the God of Genesis is not the God gnosticism refers to as the God of the Old Testament. In fact, “Everything we need to know is in the book of Genesis”— a teaching of the first revelation (1960-1974). The first chapter of Genesis provides us with an overview of the creation or salvation process, encoded in the symbolism, which is why we were given a second revelation— revelation of the symbolic code of the Bible, which I received over a period of seven years (1998-2005), during which time I was taken through the process encoded in the forty-ninth chapter of Genesis, where Jacob tells his twelve sons what will befall them in the end of days, describing what one encounters as they are taken through this salvation or healing process.

Through an understanding of biblical symbolism we are able to interpret the spiritual knowledge encoded in these gnostic writings.

Written by Sandra L. Butler © 2023

Audio Version

Gnosticism is a collection of religious ideas and systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. – Wikipedia

The Bible is a Book of spiritual knowledge, the definition of gnosis. To help us make sense of the strange gnostic teachings that sprang up after Jesus’ time, we are going to look at what the Bible has to teach us.

The Bible begins with the creation of heaven and earth (Genesis 1:1). The word genesis means creation. The God of Genesis is the God of Creation. Everything that God made was good— “And God saw that it was good.”  So the material world (real things, rather than ideas and beliefs) is good. The evil is in the ideas and beliefs that are in error, the definition of sin. God did not form evil. God created evil, the idea of evil, like the idea of heaven and earth, which had yet to be formed as we see in the following verse. This allowed for freewill. The freedom to choose between two opposing thoughts. God said they would die if they ate of fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden (Genesis 3:3). The serpent said they would not die (Genesis 3:4). They chose the latter, disobeying God’s word.

“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”   Religion, born of spiritual disobedience, is responsible for bringing another God into existence.  The children of Israel disobeyed God’s Commandment by worshipping the gold calf, placing themselves under the law instituted by the tribe of Levi, under which there was no mercy. The God of Leviticus is the God of Religion. The God of Destruction. Look at all of the death and destruction that takes place in the name of religion. The “other gods” we worship symbolize our false religious and personal beliefs, evil gods, merciless and cruel, which oppress and limit us in life, bringing pain and sorrow into our life.

Our false beliefs are what the prophet Jeremiah calls “man’s word,” which he prophesies will be man’s burden (23:36). God’s creation was made through God’s word— “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.” Genesis 1:3,4.  Man’s creation was made through man’s word. “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness…” Isaiah 5:20, the word woe meaning misery, grief.  We called evil good, putting darkness for light by mistaking lies for truth, forming an unholy creation called “the first heaven and the first earth,” which passes away upon the creation of “a new heaven and a new earth.”  To form this holy creation will require us to follow God’s instruction by dividing the light from the darkness— the truth from the lies. It will require us to follow the instruction of Jesus by engaging in an internal judgment, through which we overcome our false beliefs, which is called “the regeneration” (Matthew 19:28), the act of regenerating, which is to form anew, the outcome of which will be joy instead of pain and sorrow.  “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” Revelation 21:4

Gnosticism claims that the fall in the garden didn’t occur through Adam and Eve— it happened before the world’s creation, through a mistake made by a heavenly being called Sophia. We want to be very careful with our interpretation of these gnostic teachings. We don’t want to deny responsibility for the fall, symbolizing the spiritual decline of mankind, which we all played a part in. The story of Sophia’s fall is told slightly differently in the many Gnostic texts that discuss it, but they all share the basics in common. God the Father gave rise to a host of spiritual beings, aeons, who populated Heaven, which the Gnostics called the Pleroma: a state of perfect fullness, especially of God’s being. Along with a divine Mother and Christ. One of the last of these beings to emanate from the Father, Sophia, gave birth to a new being on her own, without the involvement of her partner or the approval of the Father. The being born under such circumstances was nothing like the perfect inhabitants of the Pleroma; instead, he was ignorant and malevolent. This was the demiurge, whom the Gnostics identified with the god of the Old Testament. He created the material world to mirror his own wicked personality and trapped sparks of divinity, fragments of the Pleroma, within humans. It was then up to Christ to awaken humans to their true nature and liberate them from the world. Sophia is a feminine figure, similar to the human soul, one of the feminine aspects of God.
(read more @ gnosticismexplained.org)

The definition of aeon is a divine power or nature emanating from the Supreme Being and playing various roles in the operation of the universe. So these aeons carry this divine power. That was the state of Adam and Eve before they ate of the evil; before they accepted the false belief. They were spiritual beings, wrapped in a glorified type of flesh body, which allowed them to interact with and enjoy the physical realm. The “coats of skins” they received because of spiritual disobedience were not animal skins (as religion teaches), but physical flesh bodies, which limited them to the physical realm. This was Adam and Eve’s fall from the spiritual realm called Heaven to the physical realm called Earth. The fall was from spiritual to physical, so how could the fall have taken place before the physical world came into existence?

Like Adam and Eve, we received a spiritual flesh body through spiritual disobedience; by eating of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, which is to accept the false belief in our heart, which formed this sinful flesh body inside of our physical flesh body. What is this divine power called aeon?  It is the two divine attributes of the Creator; the two things needed for Creation. God’s Spirit and God’s word— “And the Spirit of God moved… And God said,…” Genesis 1:2, 3.  Being made in the spiritual image of God, we carried this divine power. But in the process of time, we replaced God’s Spirit and word with our own spirit and word, replacing love with fear and truth with lies.

To restore this divine power from within, will take the activation of God’s Spirit, the instruction for which is given to us by Moses, symbolizing the Spirit of God— “Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord…” Exodus 14:13, the word still meaning be silent, quiet self. And by John, through the revelation of Jesus, symbolizing the word of God— “And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for the space of half an hour.” Revelation 8:1. There is silence in heaven when the seventh seal is opened because silence in heaven, symbolizing silence in the mind, opens the seventh seal, which in the language of the east, is the seventh chakra, through which we connect with the divine source. The holy spirit will deliver truth to our heart IF we stop resisting it. With each false belief we remove through truth, we remove a layer of this invisible flesh that has been formed within us— a process through which we become spiritual beings (aeons) with respect to our spiritual essence.

Along with the creation of the aeons, was the creation of the Mother and Christ. That is because christ is the divine power that works through our spiritual mother to restore the divine power to the perfect state in which we received it at birth. That is going to take spiritual works; the works of a new creation, which comes into existence when we conceive of truth in that spiritual mother called the heart through the christ power. Our spiritual Mother has a name. She is called Jerusalem. The Mother of gnosticism is called Barbēlō, often referred to as ‘Mother-Father.’ She is the divine Mother that is in the image of the Father. Sounds confusing, yet no more confusing than the teachings of another Mother— the Catholic Church, who refers to Mary as “the Mother of God,” which adopted the “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit” doctrine, legitimized by the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD.

Add to that the mistranslation of John 1:1, in which “a god was the word” has been changed to “the Word was God.”  The Son is not the Father. Nor is the Holy Spirit the Father. The three are not one. The three are of one— a man sows his seed by his energy. God the Father sows His seed by His Holy Spirit (male) into the Mother (female), which produces a son (a god). The seed is the word of God (Luke 8:11). When God spoke His word (Genesis 1:3), it was the sowing of God’s seed into Mother Earth. Just as God sowed His seed through His holy Spirit into Mother Mary. And as God, through holy spirit, will sow spiritual seed, in that spiritual Mother or Earth called the Heart, IF we don’t resist it! The spiritual seed of God is truth, which Jesus personified.

The Bible speaks of two fathers: the Father of truth and the father of a lie. “Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me…“Ye are of your father the devil… He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” John 8:42, 44. If God were our Father, we would love truth. Two fathers, sowing two very different seeds (truth and lie) by two very different energies (love and fear)— the Father that sows good seed through the power called christ and the father that sows evil seed through the power called antichrist. Two sons, the son of creation, and the son of perdition, which means utter ruin or destruction. Two mothers, the mother that is in bondage and the mother that is free. “For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.” Galatians 4:25, 26.

The word Barbēlō (the mother of gnosticism) means son of tribute, the word bar meaning son (as the heir to the throne), and belo meaning tribute, which means a burden, forced labor, from the prime root, bâlâh, meaning to fail, wear out, decay, similar to bâla, the prime root of bela, meaning ruin, destruction, sharing the same meaning as the word perdition, as in “the son of perdition.” Which son has mankind chosen to inherit that spiritual throne called the heart?  Some gnostic texts refer to Barbelo as the Mother of Christ. However, Christ is not a person, christ is the healing power that works in a person who has experienced a spiritual intercourse or communication with this power that works through the heart when the power of the mind is silenced. The outcome of this union is the healing or salvation of the soul. 

Sophia, an analogy to the soul, gave birth to a new being on her own, without the involvement of her partner or the approval of the Father. Like Sophia, we gave birth to a new being, or rather a new [state of] being through a creation that God the Father did not approve of, as it was not formed according to His instruction. This unholy creation (as previously mentioned) is called “the first heaven and the first earth,” which we began forming early on in life, just past the age of four (according to the biblical text). Heaven symbolizes the mind and the earth symbolizes the heart, aspects of the soul, which due to their compromised state, are in need of healing. Sophia gave birth to this new being without the involvement of her partner, as we conceived of, and gave birth to this first creation without the involvement of our one true spiritual husband. “The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, thou hast well said, I have no husband: For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband…” John 4:17, 18.  Our one true spiritual husband is truth, the seed or word of God— the spiritual Jesus. It is truth that heals or saves the soul, transforming the soul (the mind and heart) from an impure to a pure state. “Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.” Matthew 23:26. If we purify the thoughts of our mind and the emotions of our heart (by way of the christ power), our actions will be pure. Thought, emotion, and action— the three aspects of the soul. The [state of] being born as a result of this unholy creation is nothing like the [state of] being born as a result of a holy creation. Man’s unholy creation has him living in a world of chaos, confusion, unrest, death, and destruction.

“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away… And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” Revelation 21:1-4. The new Jerusalem symbolizes a new peaceful state of being, the word Jerusalem meaning founded peaceful. Coming down from God out of heaven reveals that it is spiritual— a peaceful state that must be established within before it can come into existence from without. “I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together: Whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the LORD. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.” For there are set thrones of judgment, the thrones of the house of David. Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. For my brethren and companions’ sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee.” Psalms 122.  At the start of the new millennium, the world made a transition— from the “era of Isaac” to the “era of Jacob;” the era of Spirit, and of spiritual awakening. Now, the only way to effect positive change in our external world is to bring about positive change in our internal world through a new creation. As it was “up to Christ to awaken humans to their true nature and liberate them from the world,” it is up to humans to awaken the christ power, through which we will form “a new heaven and a new earth,” symbolizing “a new mind and a new heart,” restoring our true spiritual nature, while liberating ourselves from a world of suffering.

According to gnosticism, Sophia, meaning Wisdom, is a feminine figure, similar to the human soul, one of the feminine aspects of God. The soul is the vital principle in man credited to the faculty of thought, emotion, and action. Mind, heart, and body— the trinity of the soul. Knowledge is of the mind. Understanding is of the heart. Wisdom is of the body— the action we apply to the spiritual understanding of spiritual knowledge, which leads to a true spiritual experience, the true meaning of gnosis. The soul, and the flesh body that it is housed in, is female. “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… male and female created he them.”Genesis 1:26, 27, the “our” refers to the two attributes of God— Spirit and word (Energy and seed), which are male. We were literally made when our father, by his energy, sowed his seed, into our mother, who made our flesh body— “made of a woman, made under the law.” Galatians 4:4. The “male and female” that God created were Adam and Eve. But there is also the “male and female” within us. “Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.”  Genesis 5:2.   We are spiritually male and female. We are male in that we have the ability to sow spiritual seed by spiritual energy. We are female in that we serve as the habitat for this seed and energy. What is born of this union depends on what type of energized seed was conceived in that spiritual mother called the heart. But does God have feminine aspects as suggested by gnostics?  An aspect would be a characteristic that describes God. We have a flesh body.  Flesh is female. God is Spirit. “No man hath seen God at any time…” John 1:18.  God has no flesh. Therefore, God is not female. Being made in the image of God refers to the spiritual image of God, which is male— the Spirit and Word of God, which Moses and Aaron, Joshua and Caleb, Elijah and Elisha, John and Jesus (all males) personified. There is no God the Mother. “Heavenly Father and Earthly Mother, Spiritual Sun and Holy Spirit,” an invocation of the Sophian tradition, is more on point. The Heart is the Mother, which conceives of the word of truth through the power of the holy Spirit—  the two aspects of the Father.  Seed is sowed in the Earth, symbolizing the Heart.

Adam represents a pure spiritual state of being— the state in which we enter this world. God’s Spirit is Love and God’s word is truth. They say “the eyes are the window to the soul,” which is why we feel love when we look into the eyes of a newborn. They also say, “if you want to know the truth, ask a child.” A child is incapable of telling a lie until he learns fear, which leads to doubt, which the serpent used to get Eve to accept the lie.  Eve symbolizes the Mind, which upon taking in the lie, becomes confused. This is why the God of Genesis does not want us to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve have already eaten of the good, having a positive experience. But to eat of the good and the evil is to have the knowledge of both, to experience the negative consequence of accepting the evil, the word serpent meaning to learn by experience.   We gave birth to Cain when we took in our first lie, Abel symbolizing the righteous truth we slayed or rendered unconscious through the many lies we would speak in the realm of our mind— in the kingdom of heaven. Seth is “the reappointed seed” (a teaching of the first revelation). Jesus was the reappointed seed personified— the second Adam. Just as one became the seed of Abraham through physical baptism in the previous era, one can become the seed of Seth in the present era through spiritual baptism, which is to be immersed in truth, through which one becomes the “last Adam,” a quickening spirit, the word quickening meaning to (re-)vitalize, make alive, give life. To resurrect or give life to the truth preserved in the subconscious we must enter the realm of the Heart— entering the kingdom of God. 

When Jesus arrived on earth, it was all about the intellect, the ability of the human mind to reach correct conclusions, determining what is true and what is false. Religion served as the intellect, determining what is right and what is wrong, which the people were in favor of because it kept them from having to battle with these decisions themselves (1 Samuel 8:19 20). Samuel means heard of God, the voice of God, the children of Israel experiencing direct communication with God through Samuel, which they rejected in favor of a king named Saul. Samuel was the type and shadow. Jesus, the word of God, was the reality. The people received direct communication with God through Jesus, who spoke for God, sharing the spiritual knowledge (gnosis), which was rejected by the Jews, taking root in early Christians, only to be usurped by a self-proclaimed teacher of the Gospel of Christ named Saul. 

It is clear from reading some of the gnostic texts, which emerged during the end of the second century, that spiritual truth had survived to some extent. But you can also tell that spiritual truth, which is of the heart, and comes by revelation, has been compromised by the musings of the mind. While entertaining for some, and feeding the egos of those attempting to interpret them (as Saul, aka Paul, attempted to interpret the spiritual teachings of Jesus), are downright confusing. “God is not the author of confusion” (1 Corinthians 14:33), spoken by the one who caused the confusion by mixing carnal law with spiritual truth; mixing milk with meat, which is unlawful. “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.” 1 Corinthians 14:34. The woman being subject to the man is a spiritual law, of which the carnal law was a figure— the flesh is to be subject to the inner being. Clearly, Paul was not spiritually minded. Paul was religiously minded, in which the woman holds a lower position than the man. Unlike Jesus, who placed Mary Magdalene in a higher position, which he demonstrated through his love for her, and which she demonstrated towards him through her love of truth. The Feminine, which has been missing from the equation since the time of Mary Magdalene, plays the most important role in the salvation of the soul. She represents the Heart, out of which Jesus cast the seven devils, symbolizing the spiritual impurities of the heart (Matthew 15:19), which is the salvation of the soul. It is time to make the transition from the Mind to the Heart; from Religion to Spirituality. The cause of all of our suffering is due to the bypassing of the Heart— the only place from which we can transform ourselves, and the material world.

There is no Elijah coming to sit at the table. No Jesus coming in the clouds. No Mothership coming from Planet-X. There is no salvation coming from without. I believe what we have in some of these gnostic writings is the mixing of spiritual truth with religious iniquity. Just as we must separate the esoteric teachings of Jesus from the exoteric teachings of Paul, we must separate the wheat from the tares when it comes to these gnostic writings, the wheat symbolizing the spiritual truth we can glean from them, the tares symbolizing the error in them.  For example, the God of Genesis is not the God gnosticism refers to as the God of the Old Testament. In fact, “Everything we need to know is in the book of Genesis”— a teaching of the first revelation (1960-1974). The first chapter of Genesis provides us with an overview of the creation or salvation process, encoded in the symbolism, which is why we were given a second revelation— revelation of the symbolic code of the Bible, which I received over a period of seven years (1998-2005), during which time I was taken through the process encoded in the forty-ninth chapter of Genesis, where Jacob tells his twelve sons what will befall them in the end of days, describing what one encounters as they are taken through this salvation or healing process.

Through an understanding of biblical symbolism we are able to interpret the spiritual knowledge encoded in these gnostic writings.

Written by Sandra L. Butler © 2023