Egregoros

@sun There are, and my personal feeling is that the demiurge the Gnostics identify (and so resent) is just a particularly bothersome Asura that enjoys CLAIMING it created and has dominion over the world, but like the rest of my take that's me speaking as a Dharmist.

Another thing I find particularly troublesome in a lot of Gnostic branches is the focus on Jesus. Early Gnosticism is all about anointing YOURSELF as the Christ (in fact, "Christ" was originally a Gnostic title) in order to be master of your own qualia, but a lot of what survives after the Christian purges of Gnostic material focuses on Jesus as "THE Christ" instead, just like Christianity does. Jesus Christ as "The Way" and all that. I've even seen (prolific) Gnostic material that claims Jesus as the only pneumatic. It's sad when you come across a Gnostic text called something like "THE TRUE AND HIGHMOST REVELATION OF SETH" that turns out to be a lot of babble about Jesus.

@sun I see it as the inevitable result of applying Greek philosophy to a Jewish worldview. I'm obviously biased here but the way I see it, the Jewish worldview (which Christianity inherits) gives God an anthropomorphic personality and an ego, and the spirit fundamentally recognises this as wrong - which is why the open secret of Judaism is that their god isn't really GOD, but rather just "their" god that they need to circumvent in order to live properly. This disconnect between the "demiurge" (the Judeo-Christian god) and God (as in Logos, Brahman, Olodumare etc.) creates an innate striving for the "real thing" and a feeling of wanting to escape one to find the other.

In short, it offers an escape from a worldview that fundamentally makes you submit to an unjust authority, while offering you the higher philosophy that can only flourish in the absence of a controlling anthropomorphic god.

Tl;dr: The soul inherently knows there's something very wrong in the Judeo-Christian worldview, and Gnosticism offers those already inducted in it a path beyond it.

Years ago, Top Gear did an episode where they estimated the cost of playing golf to be around £3000/year (at minimum) and wanted to see if you could get into motorsport for an equivalent amount of money. They found that you could get a racing license, an appropriate car (with modifications) and ample track time to participate in rally cross for less than that.

I'm assuming costs have gone up across the board since then - it's probably at least £4000-5000 now - but I REALLY want to do that. Every few years it comes up in my mind and I always think "yeah, but I don't have the cash for it." That's still true (even more so now that I'm a student again) but maybe in the future (such as after qualifying and getting my first job in the field) it won't be. 🤞