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Originally Posted by Plethon
The creator of the material world, called Demiurgus and usually identified with the Yahweh of the Old Testament, is for Gnostics an evil minor angel (or archon as they say).
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Already we have a basic contradiction with Christianity, since in Christian theology only one thing can truly create and that is God.
Everything else is created, including beings of the Angelic Order (which includes Satan), and are unable to create new life forms as such from scratch. Such a thing is far beyond their power. There is of course such a thing as "sub-creation" whereby we may create a work of art or suchlike. But that is something quite apart from creating the material universe.
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In opposition to him is the true God of light. This supreme God is contrary to matter, indeed, matter is inherently evil in the Gnostic teaching and only spirit is good. Thence they shun procreation (abortion is a kind of modern Gnostic cult?) Even a ritual murder isn't excluded.
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Yes, if we look closely at Catharism then the essence seems to be that physical life is bad. Therefore, something like murder cannot be looke don as a crime. In fact, ritual suicide was encouraged. It would not be unfair to label it as a Medieval Death Cult.
It certainly strikes a chord with our societies today.
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This supreme God, in their cosmogony, contains in himself seeds of all things, both good and evil, which are thus somehow neutralised into a nothingness (plus and minus make zero). Thence relativism of good and evil. In Christianity God isn't source of evil, but Supreme Good (a basic diference if you ask me).
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Yes, I was thinking that Gnsoticism must therefore spawn a position of moral relativism. So their God is both a good and evil God. A schizophrenic god of sorts.
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Between the supreme Gnostic God of the light as the highest level and the matter as the lowest level there are various intermediary states and entities. The point is that all those lower states of the existence came into being by a gradual degradation of the supreme Deity, by its degeneration, somehow spontaneously. So it's not Creation in Christian sense. The creator of the material world is considered as one abiding in the lowest levels of the universe.
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It's very similar to Freemasonry and their Luciferian belief in dual gods, imitative but opposite (of course Lucifer is the good god and the Christian god is evil to them)
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The task of the man is to set himself free from the bondage of the matter, to ascend in higher spheres, but through his own means, through some kind of occult cgnition, knowledge (gnosis), not through grace (because there is not any in that supreme Gnostic deity, the God of light, the pleroma).
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And yet their Gnostic God does not make this knowledge freely available, but instead keeps it hidden and the property of secret gnostic sects.
What could his reasoning be?