CULT WATCH

GNOSTICISM

Around the time of Christ, a cultish movement were the Gnostics. Known mainly through the Nag Hammadi Scrolls, found in Egypt in 1945, their name comes from ‘gnosis’, meaning knowledge. Some sixty schools of Gnosticism are known, including the Simonian and Valentinian.
Named after their leaders, most schools are thought to have indulged in orgies and often their beliefs included a ‘whore’, thought to be a survival of pagan fertility cults. However, their ideas are interesting.
Simon believed the world was created by thought, but thought was replaced by suffering. Valentinus believed was God was ultimate joy and truth rather than an entity.
The world was created by a lesser God called ‘terror’.The world locked man in terror, from which he must escape through meditation.
These are the general themes of Gnosticism – the idea that the physical world is evil. Only the higher, spiritual realms of consciousness are real. This is the knowledge behind their practices, and this beautiful world is reached through meditation, where the person becomes Christ-like.
Such views were anathema as Christianity grew as a major religion – a religion many believe to have actually begun in the Gnostic schools. Not everyone could be Christ-like, and God who created the world had to be good God. Hence, the Gnostics were ruthlessly suppressed.
Yet in the Gnostics we find all the elements of a cult from that day to this – the worship of a person as god-like, a predilection towards behaviour that would be classed as deviant, and an acceptance that there is something wrong with the world.

(c) Anthony North, Feb 2007

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KNIGHTS TEMPLAR

The Knights Templar were formed by a small group of knights led by Hugh de Payens in 1118 at the time of the First Crusade to the Holy Land, they were an elite military force of monk/knights charged with guaranteeing
safe passage for Christians.
Growing in power and becoming rich by instituting the first form of banking network, they would receive money for safe keeping from pilgrims, giving it back to them when they reached their destination, using the money during the journey to increase their wealth.
Having a Gnostic-type form of worship, rumours soon began that this was Devil worship, based around the worship of the demon-like Bahomet. By 1300 they had fifteen thousand members and owned some nine thousand castles and manors.
Clearly they were becoming too powerful for the Christian hierarchy, who were pleased when the French king decided upon a coup to oust them. In 1303 they were driven out of the Holy Land by Islam and took refuge in Cyprus and other areas of Europe, their organisation suddenly weak.
Charged with heresy, they were attacked, their leaders, including Jacques de Molay, were arrested. Being the Grand Master of the Templars he was burned at the stake in Paris in 1314. Before dying, he cursed both the Pope and the French king. Both were dead within a year.

(c) Anthony North, Feb 2007