santmat:

John Lennon: “It seems to me that the only true Christians were the Gnostics, who believe in self knowledge, i.e. becoming Christ themselves, reaching the Christ within, the light is the truth. Turn on the light. All the better to see you with, my dear.”

did he say this? Is this true at all?

“In the Acts of John, John tells his fellow disciples that it is not ‘strange or paradoxical’ that each of them sees Jesus in different ways, for he explains that what anyone can see depends on that person’s expectations and capacity.”

[But Jesus says] “that God and Father of all things cannot actually be apprehended into anthropomorphic images, since God is ‘the invisible one who is above all things, who exists as incorruption, in the pure light into which no eye may look.”

John says “To the point that I am able to comprehend him - for who will ever be able to comprehend him? God is the light, the one who gives the light; the life, the one who gives the life.”

Elaine Pagels, on the Acts of John, and the Revelation of John

(pics taken many years ago… yes, that’s me. Yes, I have blue/green streaks in my hair. Yes, I’m an ordained minster+witch, so what?)

So what can I write about, in regards to my Easter Vigil? It’s something I’ve been looking forward to writing about all weekend, but now that I’m home and sitting here, I’m not sure where to start.

Maybe writing about it will take away some of the magic…

But then again, nothing in the world can take away the magic I’ve experienced this weekend.

The husband and I drove down to Atlanta to observe the Easter Vigil with a Bishop friend of hours. But it’s more than our bishop-friend, because he was ordained by the same man who ordained me, and he’s really a type of family, like being in a coven with someone is like being family.

We all enjoyed sushi on Saturday night, from an award-winning sushi place, where I ate things I never thought I’d ever eat. (and some favorites I love to eat all the time.)

And later that night we held Easter Vigil, a very intimate ceremony full of magical holy water and incense and spells and incantations and chanting and prayer.

I don’t know if you’ve held a vigil before - any type of vigil. But it’s long, and challenging, and in the end, incredibly rewarding. I’m not a Christian, but as my Bishop-brother says, “You gotta be at least a little Pagan to be Catholic,” so the whole process translates very easily for me.

I was blessed with some revelations concerning Dionysus and wine, about blood and flesh, about sacrifice and other important things. I partook of the communion and thought I was going to pass out, which makes me think it was all very powerful magic.

And after watching Russian Royalty (for realsies) gobble down handful after handful of jelly beans, we went to bed.

The next day we feasted and after dinner and a few bottles of wine, we all shared ghost stories, which was fun (a little bit out of season, but fun.) And that night the Bishop read my fortune with his new really cool tarot deck, confirmed the magical name I’ve been dwelling on, told me some crazy-ass stories about Hecate and voodoo, and then we watched the new Doctor Who.

So what’s the point in all of this? That those stupid Pagan assholes who have been talking shit about Christo-Paganism can just suck it. They can suck it! Because my weekend and my experiences were beautiful, beyond Pagan or Catholic. They were really just devotion to God, to the Cosmos, to family, to one another, to love, to joy.

And what can be more worthy?

Because I believe 100% that those assjerks who bash Christopaganism have never held Easter Vigil (really really really held it), and they’ve never broken bread with their brother, and they’re too busy being assholes to just enjoy the magic and grace that is all around them, in all of its manifestations.

But as pointed about by the man who ordained me, this Pagan+Christian fun-time isn’t a new thing. Not really. I think 2,000 years ago Pagans and Christians and Gnostics and Jews and Philosophers and all sorts of heretical Others got together in some guy’s basement. I think they held very intimate ceremonies full of magical holy water and incense and spells and incantations and chanting and prayer. I think afterwards they had some blood/wine and laughed and told ghost stories and said “how cool was that shit!”

Because religion is way, way more about whether or not I call myself a Wiccan or some other Neo-Pagan nonsense thing. It’s about devotion, it’s about service. It’s about God.

And if devotion to God(s/dess) is at the center of your life and your practice, then who cares what you call yourself? Who cares how your practice manifests?

God doesn’t. God is just glad that you’re taking the time out to love God and to love one another and then maybe love yourself, too.

Truly it’s an Easter miracle.

(via santmat)

Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill - Official Music Video (by KateBushMusic)

I’m up too late when I should be sleeping or studying or writing or something, and instead I’m listening to this song on repeat thinking about Gnosis, and I’ve decided that this is a Gnostic song, though I’m not quite sure why.

But making a deal with God sounds like something the Gnostics would do, right?

Rumi (via fuckyeahrumi)

sounding a lot like the Gospel of Thomas there, Rumi

(via helloimmrburns)

Good night!

azazyl:

Helios Christos talisman
‘The deified sun’

Helios Christos! this needs to be in my life

Sophia!

you of the whirling wings,

circling encompassing

energy of God:

you quicken the world in your clasp.

One wing soars in heaven

one wing sweeps the earth

and the third flies all around us.

Praise to Sophia!

Let all the earth praise her!

_ Hildegard of Bingen

Wrote a blog post about my fast, but then I deleted it.

Here is this instead:

He is fullness, uniting itself with emptiness.

He is the sacred wedding;

He is love and the murder of love;

He is the holy one and his betrayer.

He is the brightest light of day and the deepest night of madness.

To see him means blindness;

To know him is sickness;

To worship him is dead;

To fear him is wisdom;

Not to resist him means liberation

…

Abraxas is the sun and also the eternally gaping abyss of emptiness, of the diminisher and dissembler, the devil.

…

Abraxas, however, speaks the venerable and also accursed word, which is life and death at once.

- The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead