The Way of Gnosis
Growing the Seed of Light in Dark Times
$195.00
That sense of alienation, of apartness from society, time, and place: What if it's not you? What if the Sacred is itself in exile?
In this six-week course, we will find guidance in past and present traditions of gnosis: of seeing through life, society, and self to the sources of our consciousness. Within those depths we encounter dreams, archetypes, bright shards of myth, ancient lore, and our intimate connections to the world itself, and perhaps to something more.
Our map will be the Silver Tree of Gnosis with roots reaching back from ancient Egyptian lore to Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Islamic gnosis, Romanticism, Transcendentalism, Jungian psychology, terrapsychology, and Depth Philosophy. This will not be an academic excursion, but a search for images, ideas, and practices that speak to us.
We will meet weekly via Zoom starting Nov. 1st at 10 am Pacific. Each session will be an hour and a half and include discussion and various exercises to deepen into gnosis. We will record the sessions, so you'll have any you need to miss.
When the world as we know it feels heavy and difficult, sometimes we gain strength by expanding and reenchanting our worldview.
Note: If for some reason you can't place an order, reach out to me. Thanks.
Classes are 6 Saturdays at 10 am Pacific.
We'll record them in case you need to miss.
Week 1: Gnosis, Imagination, and the Need for Myth
In this week we will go over examples of gnosis, a knowing deeper than the intellect it includes. We will consider imagiknowing, a form of gnosis suited to deep inquiry into the events of our turbulent times. We will also inquire into the absence of a containing mythology for today and see how the Silver Tree tradition might grow new fruits of story and practice for orienting ourselves in an animate world.
Week 2: Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and Alchemy
These approaches to gnosis sprang up like siblings in Alexandria in the first century CE and extended forward, with alchemy reaching centuries beyond its Egyptian origins. What Pronoian wisdom—the kind we can apply to how we live—do the complexities of these inward, lunar, and reflective traditions hold for use in our day? How might they empower creative action in the world?
Week 3: Islamic, Romantic, and Transcendental Gnosis
For this week our guides in gnosis will be Ibn 'Arabi, some of the European Romantic philosopher-poets, and Emerson. All spoke to the aliveness of gnosis in touch with imagination not just as a human capacity, but as a realm of being. For them, the aeons and archons of Gnosticism and Hermeticism return as powers within the soul as well as presences showing up in the world around us.
Week 5: Gnosis in Jungian Psychology and Terrapsychology
The Hermetic-Gnostic vitality of the Silver Tree pulses in Jungian psychology, founded by the (re)discoverer of active imagination as conscious dreaming, and terrapsychology, which uses methods from the humanities and depth psychology to listen in on what the places where we live and love have to say in the depths of the psyche. Week 5 will also focus on tools crafted from approaches for moving into an Earth-honoring gnosis.
Week 6: The Path of Gnoesis
Gnoesis is my term for a confluence of gnosis, noetic imagination that brings mind into alignment with heart ("kardiognosis"), and mythopoesis of the kind that makes new myths from past and present tales, visions, and dreams. We will survey mythopoetic offerings from speculative fiction and then center on examples of how this path of gnosis can lead us back into the Great Conversation with the animate world resacrilized.
