in the interest of clarity
Dec. 20th, 2006 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrienmundion 'gnostic' as I use it
Unsurprisingly, I tend to go with the linguistic/etymological rather than cultural/historical meaning on this. As I understand it, the root is gnosis, or knowledge, with the implication that direct knowledge of ... something else/hidden/outside of the domain of convention is possible (it's too bad I don't have an authority on the Greek language with which to confer...).
What I don't mean is any allusion to dualism or the corruption of the material (which doesn't even make sense unless one necessarily differentiates spirit from matter, which I don't (and yet I'm not a strict materialist, either)), and I certainly don't speak to any absolute hierarchy of supernatural beings because, well... that's not been my direct experience (and I take so little on faith).
In the rare instances that I do intend to speak of the collected traditions that are generally lumped together under cultural/historical Gnosticism, I always use the capital 'G' (this can be potentially confusing if I use the term at the beginning of a sentence, but that seems rare, and in such cases I count on context to assist.)
Unsurprisingly, I tend to go with the linguistic/etymological rather than cultural/historical meaning on this. As I understand it, the root is gnosis, or knowledge, with the implication that direct knowledge of ... something else/hidden/outside of the domain of convention is possible (it's too bad I don't have an authority on the Greek language with which to confer...).
What I don't mean is any allusion to dualism or the corruption of the material (which doesn't even make sense unless one necessarily differentiates spirit from matter, which I don't (and yet I'm not a strict materialist, either)), and I certainly don't speak to any absolute hierarchy of supernatural beings because, well... that's not been my direct experience (and I take so little on faith).
In the rare instances that I do intend to speak of the collected traditions that are generally lumped together under cultural/historical Gnosticism, I always use the capital 'G' (this can be potentially confusing if I use the term at the beginning of a sentence, but that seems rare, and in such cases I count on context to assist.)
